Thanks to ETL for posting this excellent article.
As a result I’ve just spent 3.5 hrs researching Martinotti cells. I’ve often wondered why, in some people I can’t lift their consciousness beyond a certain level. It hits a ceiling and stops. For me, it actually feels like they have a hat on their head that keeps consciousness functioning at the lower levels. This is a safety mechanism to stop consciousness from reaching high frequencies while still holding on to dense low frequency memories such as fear, anger, guilt. It’s kind of like the tilt cut out switch on the spin cycle of a washer. If you put in a wet blanket the washer starts wobbling and does not reach full spin frequency.
These Martinotti cells are in the distal layer of the brain and connect to the apex dendrite of the pyramidal cells limiting their frequency range. This also explains the feeling as though a rubber swim cap is being pulled down over my head as I tune to the higher frequencies of consciousness.
It also explains why I get a headache if I allow myself to get angry. It’s not blood pressure going up, but a pinching feeling in my brain.
Seeking understanding of the human body and the related consciousness interaction is far better than any crossword puzzle existing. What is fascinating is that intelligence is a function of the level of consciousness functioning at any moment. When I first reached the higher levels many years ago, it was as though a thousand volumes of encyclopedias were downloaded into me like epiphanies. The higher you go the easier it gets. Staying up there in this reality is very difficult. We become all ONE at the higher levels.
Per a journal article:
Scientists at Karolinska Institutet and the Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland have now discovered a mechanism that might explain how the most common type of neuron in the cerebral cortex - the pyramid cell - is prevented from becoming over-activated. Their results show that a rarer cell type that links collections of pyramid cells - called a Martinotti cell - acts as a kind of safety device. When a Martinotti cell receives signals above a certain frequency, it responds by sending back inhibitory signals that moderate surrounding pyramid cells.
Jennifer Ouellette
Nov 7, 2016
The mere mention of “quantum consciousness” makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects might indeed play some role in human cognition.
Matthew Fisher, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised eyebrows late last year when he published a paper in Annals of Physics proposing that the nuclear spins of phosphorus atoms could serve as rudimentary “qubits” in the brain—which would essentially enable the brain to function like a quantum computer.
As recently as 10 years ago, Fisher’s hypothesis would have been dismissed by many as nonsense. Physicists have been burned by this sort of thing before, most notably in 1989, when Roger Penrose proposed that mysterious protein structures called “microtubules” played a role in human consciousness by exploiting quantum effects. Few researchers believe such a hypothesis plausible. Patricia Churchland, a neurophilosopher at the University of California, San Diego, memorably opined that one might as well invoke “pixie dust in the synapses” to explain human cognition.
Fisher’s hypothesis faces the same daunting obstacle that has plagued microtubules: a phenomenon called quantum decoherence. To build an operating quantum computer, you need to connect qubits—quantum bits of information—in a process called entanglement. But entangled qubits exist in a fragile state. They must be carefully shielded from any noise in the surrounding environment. Just one photon bumping into your qubit would be enough to make the entire system “decohere,” destroying the entanglement and wiping out the quantum properties of the system.
It’s challenging enough to do quantum processing in a carefully controlled laboratory environment, never mind the warm, wet, complicated mess that is human biology, where maintaining coherence for sufficiently long periods of time is well nigh impossible.
Over the past decade, however, growing evidence suggests that certain biological systems might employ quantum mechanics. In photosynthesis, for example, quantum effects help plants turn sunlight into fuel. Scientists have also proposed that migratory birds have a “quantum compass” enabling them to exploit Earth’s magnetic fields for navigation, or that the human sense of smell could be rooted in quantum mechanics.
Fisher’s notion of quantum processing in the brain broadly fits into this emerging field of quantum biology. Call it quantum neuroscience. He has developed a complicated hypothesis, incorporating nuclear and quantum physics, organic chemistry, neuroscience and biology.
While his ideas have met with plenty of justifiable skepticism, some researchers are starting to pay attention. “Those who read his paper (as I hope many will) are bound to conclude: This old guy’s not so crazy,” wrote John Preskill, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, after Fisher gave a talk there. “He may be on to something. At least he’s raising some very interesting questions.”
Senthil Todadri, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Fisher’s longtime friend and colleague, is skeptical, but he thinks that Fisher has rephrased the central question—is quantum processing happening in the brain?—in such a way that it lays out a road map to test the hypothesis rigorously.
“The general assumption has been that of course there is no quantum information processing that’s possible in the brain,” Todadri said. “He makes the case that there’s precisely one loophole. So the next step is to see if that loophole can be closed.” Indeed, Fisher has begun to bring together a team to do laboratory tests to answer this question once and for all.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/quantum-brain/506768/
Nobody understands what consciousness is or how it works.
Nobody understands quantum mechanics either.
Could that be more than coincidence?
By Philip Ball, 16 February 2017
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170215-the-strange-link-between-the-human-mind-and-quantum-physics