ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

Models of Cytoskeletal Computing 175
may be likened to image screens as in TV sets. In a TV picture tube, the screen is
motionless and electron beams move to create a picture by their intersection with
the screen. Perhaps imaging within neurons occurs on traveling screens generated
by action potentials moving through parallel MT arrays. The content of such
images would depend on programming mechanisms in the conformation of
tubulin subunits which comprise the MT walls and which update with each
successive action potential. Hameroff and Watt (1982) described a method of MT
tubulin programming in which charge carriers (calcium ions, electrosolitons) or
conformational waves such as phonons or solitons were steered through MT
lattices by genetically or cytoplasmically programmed tubulins and specific MAP
binding sites. MAP bridges to other MT, cytoskeleton, or other organelles were
thought to act as “sinks” or “sources” which conveyed pulse trains of
charge/conformation among MT throughout the cytoskeleton as a regulatory and
communicative medium. Hameroff and Watt (1982, 1983) likened MT to
microprocessors in which switching in a “Boolean matrix” was determined by
programming factors intrinsic to the tubulin subunits (Figure 8.9).
Figure 8.8: Interference patterns in cytoplasm caused by coherent waves (e.g.
Ca++, sol-gel state, MTL) generated by dynamic activities in microtubules may be
a basis for holographic information imagery.