ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

156 Anesthesia: Another Side of Consciousness
reversibility of anesthesia. The flip side of anesthesia, consciousness, may be
inferred to occur due to dynamic protein conformational effects among a
distributed class of brain neural proteins. Because consciousness is the brain
function most susceptible to anesthetics (which can spare breathing control and
many reflexes at appropriate concentrations) it appears related to collective effects
of protein conformartional dynamics. Inhibition of a subset of the collective
dynamics would therefore inhibit consciousness.
Conversely, excitation of a specific subset involved in collective protein
dynamics could lead to alteration or enhancement of consciousness. Psychoactive
drugs such as amphetamines and LSD can exert profound effects on the
brain/mind at extremely low concentrations. They are thought to bind and to exert
their effects at membrane protein receptors such as the serotonin receptor in the
case of LSD. Kang and Green (1970) correlated the potency of psychoactive
compounds with their electronic bond structure and molecular orbitals. They
found that the drug molecules’ electronic orbital energy available to the receptors
(and connected membrane and cytoskeleton) was an index of drug potency. Thus
collective effects related to electron mobility within key proteins in a cooperative
assembly may be important to consciousness.