ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

Models of Cytoskeletal Computing 183
perpendicular to the long axis of MT could account for mysterious effects such as
the perpendicular birth of daughter centrioles and inter-MT MAP bridges. Energy
or ion fluxes radiated from MT due to propagating waves would be coherent due
to spatial periodicity of the gaps between the tubulin subunits, and could thus
form the basis of coherent wave interference in a three dimensional hologram.
Coupled to calcium/sol-gel states, holographic cytoplasm may be an
“infoplasmic” canvas for dynamic biological information.
In the brain, highly parallel arrangements of cytoskeletal proteins within
asymmetrical axons and dendrites suggest analogies to parallel computing.
Propagation of action potentials or dendritic depolarization waves could induce
sequences of alterations of MT subunit states due to influx of calcium, alteration
of electrical fields, or direct mechanical effects as sodium and water transiently
swell the nerve process. Signals may cooperatively reverberate throughout the
cytoskeleton by waves of calcium release and uptake, mechanical/electrosolitons
propagating through the cytoskeletal lattice, and/or lateral propagation through
sidearms and other components of the cytoskeletal network. Transient fluxes of
calcium resulting from conformational waves propagating down cytoskeletal
lattices in parallel with action potentials or dendritic current waves can result in
traveling frames of dynamic imagery. Sequences of image frames traveling
through holographic cytoplasm and changing with each nerve firing may
collectively be the “Mind’s Eye, the “grain of the engram.”
The current prevalent model of brain function is the “neural network,” a
collective dynamical system whose output is determined by the states of
component neuronal synapses. In turn, the state of each synapse is determined by
other neurons modulated by collective dynamic effects of the interneuronal
cytoskeleton. In turn, the cytoskeleton is a collective dynamical system whose net
activity is determined by the states of its component subunits. Their states, in turn,
are determined by another level of organization including cytoplasmic factors,
ordered water and ions, genetic isozymes of individual subunits, and lower level
cytoskeletal elements such as the microtrabecular lattice. Each cytoskeletal
subunit is a computer capable of integrating multiple inputs to a specific output
state. Cognitive processes which have been ascribed to a neural net concept may
thus be more accurately interpreted as a fractal hierarchy of dynamical systems
which are highly parallel, highly interconnected, and of increasing capacity as
they become more microscopic. Collective effects may occur at each level and at
successively more macroscopic levels. The net effect may be consciousness.
Microtubules and the cytoskeleton created their place in evolutionary history
by being problem solvers, organelle movers, cellular organizers, and intelligence
circuits. Where do they go from here