An inflection point in history: February 2014

My first blog was prompted by seeing that incredible picture of Earth as seen from the surface of Mars. That barely visible dot on the Martian night sky is the entirety of our world! Though earth is vast compared to human scales, Earth is seen as a tiny and insignificant looking speck in that picture – which makes one wonder if that is how small the whole earth and it’s nearly 7 billion humans and everything else in it look like from just from our "cosmic back yard", how insignificant is us as an individual, one among nearly 7 billion? We all like to think of us having a bit more significance than a mote of dust on a cosmic scale. But do we? Here I am trying to answer that question, and argue that we are indeed special despite our smallness.

So what makes us special in this infinitely vast and old universe? Both our physical size and temporal duration is not even a blip across the cosmic scales of space and time. But I think human’s unique capability of conscious awareness, our sense of wonder at it all, do make us special indeed. And our mind can imagine, (with some difficulty of course when it comes to the extremes of size and times) of the smallest of times and spaces to the largest. And amazingly enough, modern science has been able to answer some of the most vexing questions humans have ever posed. We have a pretty accurate measure of how old is the earth, the solar system and even the universe. We have measured not just the size of earth and our neighboring planets and our sun, but we can accurately measure distances to stars and galaxies millions and even billions of light years away. We have a well established modern creation story built up on general relativity and quantum mechanics. All this thanks to that wonderful, incredible faculty of being conscious and curious. And as far as we know, we are the only conscious beings out there. Though it does not rule out sentient beings “way out there” – so far we have not received any signals from anywhere else. This does place our species in a truly unique place in this vast cosmos of ours as the only thinking conglomeration of matter.

So what is consciousness? It is incredibly difficult to answer that simple question. And due to the very nature of the topic, even experts do not have a good grasp on the topic. Even Anesthetists, Neurologists and Psychiatrists – medical specialists who deal with learning about and controlling conscious awareness more than any other experts, do not have a good physiological grasp of what exactly constitutes consciousness nor how to measure it precisely. Anyone who has undergone anesthesia knows our sense of self, time and awareness is something that could indeed be wiped out temporarily during anesthesia. For most people who have undergone surgery, the last thing they remember may be the doctor injecting something in to them, and then waking up several hours later after surgery. Apart from not being aware of what happened in between, people also have a sense of “lost time”. This is different than while asleep. Interestingly enough, the level of anesthetics it take to make someone deeply unconscious vary from person to person, and for an outside observer it is hard to measure the depth of the patient’s level of consciousness. Researchers are developing special monitoring to see at what point someone becomes truly unconscious but this is still a work in progress. And there are horror stories of people who have undergone surgery but was not fully unconscious, a pretty scary scenario indeed, though luckily rare. While it is very easy to monitor other physiological parameters like heart rate, blood oxygen levels etc during surgery, it is quite hard to objectively measure someone else’s level of awareness – again pointing to the intensely “subjective” aspect of consciousness. (Click on the link if you would like to read more on Anesthesia awareness)

Coming back to the mystery of consciousness - while holding the shriveled up brain of a cadaver many years ago during my anatomy training, it really did not occur what an amazing and mysterious thing I was holding in my hand. It was one of those typical cases of seeing the trees but not the forest. Figuring out the various parts of brain was more urgent then than wondering about where in those folds the dead man’s consciousness was hidden! While doing my Radiology residency at Bombay we had an exceptional Neuro Radiologist, Dr. Hemant Patel, who taught us the gray and white images were more than just pixels and voxels but the picture of something much more profound. Consciousness remains a mysterious force, beyond any easy scientific explanation. Somewhere, somehow, the material brain and it’s billions of neurons and trillions of connections create this non material thing variously called consciousness, soul, spirit or self awareness. But modern science has not been one to shy away from questions like these (and others like the origin of universe, origin of life etc) that were forever the domain of theology.

We are indeed making rapid progress in studying how our brain actually works. It is pretty amazing how much we do know about the brain - it was not too long ago humans even figured out consciousness resides within the brain. The Pharaohs had their brain removed during mummification – as the ancient Egyptians did not think it was an important enough organ to keep for after life and heart was thought to be the seat of the soul! The other wise enlightened Greeks thought pituitary was to make nasal mucous. (Guess the Greek had a big problem with sinus allergies!) Nowadays, except for romantic poets and love struck teenagers, most agree "soul" is indeed in your brain, an amazing organ of barely 3 pounds but that can imagine and simulate the whole universe within! On the other hand, the same organ can be easily fooled by a simple magic trick, make people addicted to various harmful drugs and even tell people to kill themselves when depressed.

Rapid advances in Neuro Imaging including techniques like functional MRI is allowing for the first time in human history where scientists are able to directly look inside a living human brain and see which of the brain areas "lights up" during various tasks or thoughts. The invention of modern telescopes changed cosmology from a speculative field to a solid branch of physics; these modern neuroimaging is similarly transforming consciousness and brain research from a field left for theologians and spiritual gurus to speculate to a real branch of science. Along with the advances in imaging, increased interest in developing artificial intelligence (AI) has really caused this field of research to bloom rapidly over the last several years. We are beginning to piece together how brain decodes external signals and convert it to coherent images, sounds and other perceptions. Development of modern psychiatric and anaesthetic medications has shown that our personality, mood and even consciousness are not as mysterious as it was once thought of. With a technique called DBS (deep brain stimulation), psychiatrists are using magnetic “rebooting” of brain to treat diseases like depression. Even electrodes are implanted within brain itself these days to treat certain movement disorders.

All this still does not explain the “hard problem” of consciousness, which is the nature of subjective experience, or 'qualia'- our 'inner life' (Chalmers' "hard problem"). This is that inner feeling which is really something you cannot convey to someone else. Take for example this simple puzzle: how would you describe what the color "Green" feel inside of you to a blind person in words? We can’t, and this makes the study of subjective experience or "qualia" a really hard problem indeed. Think of the age old question “If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around to hear it, would it still make a sound?” At first this seems like a very silly question. But think again – though the tree falling is clearly going to make changes in the air pressure around whether there is someone listening to it or not, it does take a “brain” to convert that differential air pressure to what we calls as the subjective experience of “sound”.

What about the puzzles of decision making? How and what makes us do specific things or decide on specific actions? Some studies clearly show our huge subconscious mind does most of the decision makings, and once the decision has been already made by the sub conscious mind, let the conscious mind “feel” like it made the decision – called as "post ad hoc rationalization". So while every one is convinced of their own power of how, why and what they think, the experience of conscious awareness and the origin of thoughts are really more complicated. If you doubt it – do you know what you would be thinking 10 minutes from now? We don’t – the thought just comes to us, without any “conscious” effort nor control. In fact many of the “happiness” research focus on precisely how to control one’s thoughts. The idea is that we cannot really control anything except our own thoughts; and most unhappiness comes from trying to control people and situations around us, so just focus on controlling one’s own thoughts. This is easier said than done – as it takes a trained Yogi or truly spiritual person to be really in control of their own thoughts.

The most remarkable aspect of consciousness is our self awareness - that feeling of a "small me" inside our head. For us, that "small me" is a continuous being - we do not think our self as a different person than when we were a 10 year old, except as an older person. This seems like a simple problem - but scientific research has shown that not a single atom that was part of us even 5 years ago is present in our body now - we are in a real sense a new conglomeration of matter than when we were even 5 years ago. (Studies at the Oak Ridge Atomic Research Center in fact showed that about 98 percent of all the atoms in a human body are replaced every year. You get a new suit of skin every month and a new liver every six weeks. The lining of your stomach lasts only five days before it’s replaced. Even the atoms of the bones do not last more that a year. Experts in this area of research have concluded that there is a complete, 100 percent turnover of atoms in the body - including that of the brain - at least every five years. In other words, not one single atom present in your body today was there five years ago.) So what gives our feeling of being a continuous presence? As the atoms in our brain keeps changing, it can not be a fully material explanation. Whether this is a soul, separate from our physical body or whether it is a continuation of patterns - even though the atoms creating this pattern changes - is an interesting question.

Below is my humble attempt at illuminating some of the interesting current theories on the origin of consciousness. This is indeed a brief list, the field is so vast and ever rapidly accelerating, and so this is just a "sampler" - for those interested to learn in detail I have listed a number of suggested readings at the end of this post. Please also note I do not claim any special expertise on the field other than being a curious observer of the topic for many years.

Consciousness as a "Symphony"

This is a metaphor of consciousness that is fairly easy to grasp. The idea says, different areas of brain with various specialization perceives world and their synchronized synthesis is what one would call a "thought". So when you see a cup of nice hot tea, the olfactory center perceives the smell, the tactile centers perceives the feel, the gustatory centers get ready to taste it and your memory areas remind you of how it tasted in the past; and together these various signals create a symphony in your brain - which to you would be the idea of "tea". Our peculiar capability - and curse - that is unique to the human brain is the ability to create this symphony without any external stimuli. Our highly evolved prefrontal cortex is a "thought synthesizer" - we could think of tea (or of the entire universe!) even in the absence of any direct stimulus. As far as we know, even primates, our closest cousins, are unable to do this trick. They - and other animals - live in “the moment”. Their brain’s function is exclusively to marshal a response to what is happening to them in the very present. Where as humans we can use our brain to plan, design, recollect, forecast and do many other things using this facility to "simulate" events in our brain. Some philosophers argues the whole idea of "time" is such a construct of our mind; though time exists independent of us mere mortals, the idea of a "flowing time" is a construct in our brain as we are the only species able to look back in to the past as well as to forecast for the future. While incredibly helpful, this same faculty also makes us likely the only species to suffer from anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses.

What is the evidence that "thoughts" act from the synchronized activity of the different parts of the brain? Some of the best examples for this come from people with strange neurological disorders, the most famous of which is something called "The Capgras delusion". This syndrome was made famous in the fascinating book "Phantoms of the Brain" by V.S. Ramachandran - where an afflicted patient would claim his spouse, parent and other close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking imposter. This particular patient was capable of feeling emotions and recognizing faces, had no psychological disorder, but could not feel emotions when seeing familiar faces. Dr. Ramachandran hypothesizes the origin of Capgras syndrome is a disconnection between amydala and the inferotemporal cortex. In a normal situation when you look at the person, the inferotemporal cortex decodes the face; at the same time there is an emotional component connected to that person, decoded by amygdala - and when the connection is lost due to disease or injury, the person recognizes the face as someone he know well like his mother, but since he does not feel the emotional connection to the face, the only way he could come to terms with this situation is by claiming the person is not his mother but an imposter! So the disconnect between the various parts fails to create a true symphony – a coherent thought or an abstract idea – so would feel like dissonant notes. This shows a simple thought or interpretation - like "that is my mother" is complex symphony needing coordination across the various parts of brain.

How language affect our thoughts

This is an interesting question - does our language affect the way we think? If and how language shapes our thinking has been the subject of many debates over the years. This may appear as a strange concept, but lately many examples of this have been found experimentally. For example, people who speak languages that are rich in the "subjunctives" (like "I wish I had taken an umbrella” or “I wish I had taken up that job”) were found more prone to depression - the past subjunctive reminding constantly of one's missed chances and lost opportunities. On the positive side, “future subjunctive” is associated with innovation - like "what if I make a phone with no key boards but just a touch screen" kind of thoughts! In 2011, Gallup conducted a survey that ranked different nations’ feelings of optimism and pessimism. According to the results of the survey, Vietnam was the most optimistic country in the world! It appears the Vietnamese language does not have extensive grammatical rules for subjunctives, so as a people, they spend less time than others dwelling up on the past and regretting lost opportunities. And the most pessimistic people were, not surprisingly, the French! I have heard my daughter who is learning French mention on the complexity of French grammar. It is a highly evolved language and probably the richest language in the subjunctives. No wonder why all the prominent Philosophers of existentialism came from France!

Another example of how language affect how we see the world: In one famous study researchers looked at differences in how native English and Russian speakers distinguished shades of colors. For these two hues of blue (called siniy and goluboy in Russian) no similar words exists in English. What they found was incredible - Russian speakers did indeed have an advantage over English speakers in telling the two shades of blue apart! So it was like, if your language does not have a word for it, your brain just does not "see" it was a different hue! If your language did not have extensive grammatical rules on the subjunctives, then you would not dwell too much on the past, lost opportunities! This show how culture and language can affect our whole thinking process itself in such a profound and deep way.

Consciousness as a "breakdown of the bicameral mind"

Of all the theories on the origin of consciousness, this may be the strangest of all, popularized in a remarkable book by Julian Jaynes called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" which has become a “cult classic”. This is a book that one really has to read to get the full idea - a condensed version would sound just silly. Basically he suggests what we modern human calls consciousness is a relatively new phenomenon - only 3000-4000 years old. He argues that prior to that period, thoughts from the two brain hemispheres were not fully “coordinated” – all human thinking was “bicameral” with each hemisphere doing its own thinking; in short everyone had a “split personality”. He postulates those ancient humans experienced world in a manner similar to what a schizophrenic would experience it today. As thought process was not a synchronized product of both hemispheres but each hemisphere conveying thoughts, those ancient humans would hallucinate thoughts and hear voices which they ascribed to a "god" giving commands. It is even possible ancient humans could have been capable of what is termed "uni hemispheric sleep". Many animals in the wild - from dolphins to ducks - sleep with half the brain at a time; allows to remain partly vigilant against predators (or keep from drowning in case of dolphins). In fact there are some rare human sleep disorder mimicking uni hemispheric sleep.

Despite the wild claims, the book is incredibly well written and supported - he takes painstaking effort to show how cave paintings and ancient writings - like sections of Iliad - shows a lack of self awareness while later works show a beginning of conscious awareness. He also notes in the ancient times gods were much more numerous and humanized than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own "god" who reflected their own desires and experiences. Jaynes inferred that these "voices" came from the right brain counterparts of the left brain language centers—specifically, the counterparts to Wernecke's and Broca's areas. These regions are somewhat dormant in the right brains of most modern humans, but he noted that some studies show auditory hallucinations correspond to increased activity in these areas of the brain. He also argues that schizophrenia is a vestige of humanity's earlier bicameral state, as many schizophrenics do not just hear random voices but experience "command hallucinations" instructing their behavior or urging them to commit certain acts.

According to Jaynes, a shift from bicameralism marked the beginning of introspection and consciousness as we know it today. According to Jaynes, this bicameral mentality began malfunctioning or "breaking down" during second millennium BC. He speculates that primitive societies tended to collapse periodically, like the well reported mass migration of second millennium BC caused by large scale earthquakes, which created a rash of unexpected situations that required ancient minds to become more flexible and creative. Self-awareness, or consciousness, was the culturally evolved solution to this problem. Thus consciousness, like bicameralism, emerged as a neurological adaptation to social complexity in a changing world. He also argues that organized religion also arose during this breakdown period, in an attempt to summon instructions from the "gods" whose voices could no longer be heard. Leftovers of the bicameral mind today, according to Jaynes, include hypnosis, possession and schizophrenia.

Consciousness as an effect of “Brain acting as a computer”

Well, it is not surprising that most influential of modern inventions – the computer – would get compared to our brain. In terms of brute force number crunching and memory storage, cognitive tasks that were the domain of human brain until very recently, computers have far surpassed human capabilities. Some estimates of the “computing power” of human brain is variously described as 100 to 1000 petaflops, with it’s about 100 billion neurons and about 100 trillion synapses. This is an incredibly huge number indeed, and most of the processing power is used for sub conscious activities like controlling your vital functions like heart rate and breathing. Modern supercomputers are fast approaching these speeds and in a not too distant future, an artificial machine is likely to exceed even the upper estimates of the processing power and floating operations per second of a single human brain. Since computing power increases exponentially unlike human capacity, within another few decades, a single computer could exceed the computing power of all the humans combined! Now this is clearly not synonymous with computers developing consciousness, though this has not prevented some prominent scientists and thinkers – mostly from the Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence world – to predict we are close to a threshold, termed "Singularity" where computers could start actually “thinking” on their own!

I have been following AI field for some time, and I can tell you that the field is now almost like a secular religion to many. If there is a face to this movement, it is Dr. Ray Kurzweil. He is a serial inventor, multi millionaire entrepreneur and a futurist currently working at Google. Even though some of his predictions are way “out there”, his overall predictions that technological progress is exponential is now accepted wisdom. There is even a Singularity University to train CEOs of technology and other companies on how to survive (and make money) from disruptive technology. Kurzweil's own personal story is fairly impressive. Now in his 60s, he developed diabetes and high cholesterol while in his 30s. Instead of accepting the usual treatments he went in to over drive looking at diet, exercise and supplements to reverse these conditions, and apparently is now in perfect health. He even wrote a book about how he did it (Fantastic Voyage) His idea is to live till about 2030-2040 or so when he predicts computers would have advanced enough to upload an entire human brain! Before you think this is totally crazy, I suggest you do read his very well written book "The Singularity is Near".

His followers are a veritable “Who is Who” of modern technology, including Bill Gates, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and many other elites of the technology world. His book (Singularity is Near) is literally the “Holy Book” of the movement, and his weekly emails equivalent of a Sunday sermon to the flock. And just like a religion, it offers eternal life – in the form of uploading yourself, your memories and personalities to a computer! (The more benign sounding term for this is "SIM" or “Substrate Independent Minds”). The ideas sounds suspiciously similar to religion if you get to the bottom of it, but instead of myths, these folks use equations, instead of angels they have algorithms and instead of heaven, they hope to become immortal by residing within a conscious super computer! One thing I found interesting in these discussions is this: People in the computer/AI field generally are much more confident on the power of computers to attain human like power (and soon exceed – creating so called H+ or human+), but scientists in the Neurology/Psychiatry and related fields, who actually understands the complexity of brain and consciousness more, a bit more skeptical. We will have to wait and see who would turn out to be right!

Irrespective of whether one takes Kurzweil’s ideas at face value, one cannot argue the fact that AI (Artificial Intelligence) permeates our daily life already and deeply. Amazon, Netflix and similar sites uses algorithms that will suggest the likely movies and books you would like to read, and it is as good as a suggestion from a real friend. We are surrounded by gadgets to which we do “cognitive outsourcing” – letting the phone remembers the phone numbers, let the GPS remembers the address and so on. Just buying a small toy from a store like Wal- Mart initiate a cascade of AI, from the store all the way to a factory in China, letting the factory know what is going on in almost real time. Before you fill in, Google already knows what you are searching for! We let our planes be flown by computers . We let computer systems control and execute vast amount of financial power. Complex decisions like which flight routes to cancel during a winter storm to safe guarding critical infra structures are now routinely done by algorithms rather than humans. It is not an exaggeration to say that most modern complex systems would come to a stand still if these incredible machines would stop one day.

When the IBM Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in 1997, everyone was like “bring us a computer that can understand even some rudimentary language and not just play a nerdy game”. Now here we have Watson, understanding the really complex language used in the the TV game shows "Jeopardy"- not only understanding complex language but also beating some extremely talented humans in our own game! (see below).

What it once took super computers, you can carry it is your pocket today. You can communicate using "Siri" with your iPhone. With Google glass and "apps" to help decipher some one else's emotions, these gadgets are getting ever closer to our brain itself. We already have implantable cochlea communicating with human brain. Soon there will be implantable retina. And unlike our retina which would take generations of slow evolution to get better, an artificial retina can be potentially programmed to see in ultra violet or X ray (a bit scary) – eventually the one with the artificial organ could even be “better” than the biological one. It is already happening in artificial limbs, when the South African runner Oscar Pretorius ran with artificial limbs at the 2012 London Olympics.

We tend to think as humans we are the ultimate in evolution, but why would evolution stops at us? The new emergent system that can develop from the highly inter connected humans and AI is likely beyond what we can even imagine – just like the emergent property of consciousness is something an individual neuron cannot grasp – but eventually it could happen. It may not happen at the time scale Ray Kurzweil predicts, by 2030 or 2040, but we are clearly moving towards it. Looks like even popular culture and movies are getting on the band wagon; some of the more interesting movies exploring the blurring lines between humans and AI include classics like "2001 A Space Odyssy" and "Matrix" to the recent Joaquin Phoenix movie "Her" and of course "Endhiran" from Indian superstar Rajnikant. All this interest in AI is helping to bring more attention and research funding to understand human consciousness; the idea being once we understand our own "thought processes", we will then be able to create ever more powerful AI, though this of course comes at the peril of eventually making our self obsolete and slaves to our future AI overlords!

Brain as a Quantum Computer

The field of consciousness research is full of eminent scientists, but some of them are from fields far away from fields like neuro science. The most noted among this "outsiders" is Sir Roger Penrose, Astronomer Royal of England and a doyen of Physics. His contribution is to suggest that consciousness – and brain in general – is a quantum computer at its core. This has been taken up by in a big way by several "new age" gurus, most prominently by Deepak Chopra in US. He has made a very successful career blending Eastern mysticism, quantum mechanics and consciousness. Critics like Dr. Pagels claims that Chopra and other new age "gurus" are exploiting topics about which majority of people have very little real knowledge - Eastern Mysticism and Quantum Mechanics - while blending it with topics every one is fascinated with - like consciousness and spirituality - to create a very nice "tropical smoothie" with little substance. While some of the claims of the new age "Quantum Healers" is taking it a bit too far, this is a an area of real scientific interest and below is a synopsis of the ideas.

Brain as a quantum processor raises some very interesting possibilities. Quantum systems have extremely counter intuitive properties – like non locality, entanglement and uncertainty, among some. We may be beginning to understand how quantum receptivity might be built into the brain. Quantum-level signals are picked up by microstructures in our brain's cytoskeleton. The neurons in the brain are organized into a network of microtubules of microscopic size but astronomical number. While there are 100 billion neurons in our brain (which is by the way as much as the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy), conservative estimate suggest there are 10,000 trillions of microtubules in a single brain. With filaments just five to six nanometers in diameter, this microtrabecular lattice is believed to capture, process, and convey information. Physicist Roger Penrose and neurophysiologist Stuart Hameroff claim that consciousness emerges from these quantum-level elements of the brain's cytoskeleton. The term they used for this process is called “orchestrated objective reduction” (Orch OR). The microtrabecular lattice could be responsible for the quantum-receptivity of our brain, picking up, transforming, and interpreting information.

Three time-steps (e.g. at 10 megahertz) of a microtubule automaton. Tubulin subunit dipole states (yellow, blue) represent information. (Left three) Spin currents interact and compute along spiral lattice pathways. For example (upper, middle in each microtubule) two upward traveling blue spin waves intersect, generating a new vertical spin wave (a “glider gun” in cellular automata). (Right three) A general microtubule automata process. (Credit: P. Dustin, Microtubules, Springer-Verlag)

If this is indeed the case, our world can then be perceived in two distinct ways - the classical "perceptual-cognitive-symbolic" mode, based on information conveyed by our bodily senses, as well as "direct-intuitive-nonlocal" mode, enabled by the quantum receptivity of our brain's microstructures. Some authors claim these various states of our mind have corresponding EEG correlates. The British psycho physiologist Maxwell Cade found four typical EEG patterns, made up of specific combinations of alpha, beta, and theta waves. He found that dream sleep and meditation showed pronounced alpha and theta waves while state of ordinary awareness was dominated by beta waves. Interestingly he also found a "fifth state." Cade called the consciousness associated with this state "awakened mind." Just as remarkably, in the fifth state the EEG waves are balanced across the left and the right hemispheres. He - and others like Chopra - claims a hemisphere-synchronized brain can operate in the direct quantum-resonance mode: expert mediators synchronize not only their own left and right hemispheres, but can also synchronize their left and right hemispheres with the synchronized hemispheres of others who meditate with them. And this synchronization occurs in the absence of sensory contact among the mediators. They can be in different rooms, different cities, even on different continents.

So a truly evolved consciousness would then have the quantum-receptivity of deep prayer and meditation, but it would operate also in the everyday context. It would display a broad EEG wave-spectrum, embracing alpha and theta as well as beta waves. And it would show that two brain hemispheres are highly coordinated, so that information processed by the quantum-mode receiving right hemisphere is readily communicated to the sensory-information processing left. An evolved consciousness is wider and deeper than the everyday consciousness, and more functional than the consciousness of those engaged in deep prayer and meditation. They claim that in the past this kind of consciousness has been limited to to healers, prophets and spiritual masters. In the future it could spread to a wider segment of the population. These proponents of "quantum consciousness" claim that humanity is evolving its consciousness – another phase change as radical as what happened around 2000 BC as Julius Jaynes claims when our bicameral mind broke down. So when these spiritual masters say they could become "one with the universe", there could indeed be some truth to it.

This idea of OrchOR and quantum process in the brain was criticized by Neuro scientists as well as Physicists – as brain was considered too “warm, wet, and noisy” for delicate quantum processes. However recent evidence does show warm quantum coherence in plant photosynthesis, bird brain navigation, our sense of smell, and indeed brain microtubules. The recent discovery of warm-temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates the pair’s theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations. In addition, work from the laboratory of Roderick G. Eckenhoff, MD, at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that anesthesia, which selectively erases consciousness while sparing non-conscious brain activities, acts via microtubules in brain neurons.

“The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?” comments Penrose and Hameroff in a recent review. Interestingly this approach to consciousness could also explain some of the weird aspects of quantum mechanics itself. No modern scientific theory has shows as much resilience as quantum mechanics - despite many sceptics and it's extremely counter intuitive ideas, the theory has withstood the test of time, and underpins the modern marvels like integrated circuits we take for granted. However the theory has some really strange properties; including the idea of "super positions" where reality happens (or wave function collapses in quantum lingo) when we "observe" it. In other words, sub atomic particles obeying quantum rules could be in more than one place at the same time or can be a wave and particle at the same time; and the act of "observation" is what makes reality to happen! None other than one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrodinger, suggested the famous thought experiment (Schrödinger's cat) to show how weird these ideas can be. Observation - and Consciousness - is hence intricately related to reality according to quantum mechanics. If consciousness itself is part of a quantum process, may be these strange aspects of quantum mechanics could make some sense. Also as uncertainty lies at the heart of quantum processes, thoughts as quantum process may explain the unpredictability of our thoughts, emotions and actions. For example, a calcium atom obeying quantum rules could be the beginning of firing a neuronal cascade while you are driving, making you look at the left side at the wrong time, which may end up in an accident. So in a real sense, we are all like the Schrodinenger's cat - living in a superposition, being prone to look to the left or right, being right or wrong, being happy or sad, and indeed be dead or alive until you turn your head - a catastrophic macroscopic effect resulting from an unpredictable microscopic quantum event!

Taking this idea one step further is the idea of "Noetic science" - The term noetic sciences was first coined in 1973 when the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) was founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who was the sixth man to walk on the moon. During his trip back home he recalls that he felt a profound sense of universal connectedness—what he later described as a "samadhi" experience. In his own words, “The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes. . . .The knowledge came to me directly.” The idea is that our individual level consciousness is part of some thing much larger, and connected to a "universal consciousness" - each of our individual consciousness is like a drop of water from an ocean of universal consciousness. When we can think above our ego driven self, we would then be able to access this universal ocean of consciousness, instead of being limited to this small drop residing in our frail and impermanent body. It also postulates a society's combined mental state could change what happens to that society in a fundamental way, both negatively and positively. These ideas are of course highly controversial and not universally accepted though some fascinating experiments (like how thoughts could change the nature of crystal formation) is very provocative.

Consciousness as an Emergent Property

How do neural firings lead to thoughts and feelings? One interesting approach is to suggest that conscious experience “emerges” when a critical level of complexity is reached in the brain's neural networks. Complexity is in short the study of complex systems and organizations. We are surrounded by complex systems that cannot be reduced to its parts (like weather pattern, ant colonies, human consciousness etc). Emergence is when a novel property arises out of its components, and cannot be predicted based on a reductionist approach. Emergence can happen at the smallest to largest scales. Think of a simple molecule like water; the property of being “water” emerges when two gases, oxygen and hydrogen combines. “The waterness” of water molecule is an emergent property that cannot be reduced to the property of its individual elements. At a much larger scale, how a star with its fusion reaction that can go on for billions of years forms out of a gas cloud is also emergence. Complexity and emergence are the anti dotes to the chaos predicted by the second law of thermodynamics. Second law suggests that in a closed system chaos – or disorder, or entropy – can only increase with time. Second law of thermodynamics may not be the inspiration behind this following nursery song, but it basically sums it up in few simple sentences:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

However against this universal rule and tendency for chaos, it appears complexity and order somehow arises. Whether it is atoms out of smaller particles, molecules out of atoms, life out of molecules, galaxies out of gas clouds, elaborate ant hills from the labor of a billion ants (who are themselves oblivious of the final structure of the hill) or consciousness from the interactions of billions of neurons, at a critical density of matter and energy flow, something completely new emerges. The science of complexity and emergence are truly the “next big thing” for 21st century – if we can master this field, it would have enormous upside – from predicting weather patterns to neuro science to managing complex social and other networks.

The blessings of being unconscious

While the above discussion was on the advances in the fields of consciousness research, let me pause and high light how much we should appreciate our “unconscious” or “sub conscious” acts. In fact, the sign of a true master of any field is when a particular act could be carried out almost unconsciously and without effort. All of us have learned the expertise to do such tasks as breathing and walking – think how debilitating it would be if you have to deliberately and consciously take every breath and every step! From driving a car to brain surgery, a true expert does it with minimal conscious effort. In fact when we over think while doing a certain act – like in the early periods of learning to drive – we do a very poor job. This dilemma of the difficulty of doing a simple task “consciously” is described beautifully in a poem attributed to the British zoologist E. Ray Lankester,

A centipede was happy – quite!

Until a toad in fun

Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?"

This raised her doubts to such a pitch,

She fell exhausted in the ditch

Not knowing how to run.

Conclusion

Now think about it – on a small rock around an average star in a corner of a vast galaxy, out of several billion galaxies – arises our humble species to which you and I belong to, a species that is able to wonder at the meaning of it all thanks to our consciousness! Interestingly enough, what modern physics have found is that the Universe almost looks “custom” made for life and eventually consciousness to evolve. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg noted that if any of the basic physical parameters like the cosmological constant or strong nuclear force or many other parameters were even fractionally different, our universe would not have sustained stars and planets, let alone life and consciousness. Some of these parameters are fine tuned to an incredible precision of over 120 decimal points! So it almost feels like the Universe “wants” us to be here and wants us to be “aware”. As Freeman Dyson famously said “The Universe knew we were coming”. Think about that for a minute – during the infinitesimal seconds of the initial inflation that resulted in the big bang, when the laws of physics for our particular universe was written, it was done in a way so that eventually there would be life and later on thinking life. We may be smaller than a mote of dust on a cosmic scale, but as far as we know we are alone as the only aggregation of matter capable of wondering at the wonder and marvel of it all. And if the predictions of AI enthusiasts are going to be true, we will also be converting ever more matter in the universe to become self aware. So in one sense we are not insignificant at all – we are universe itself waking up, becoming aware of itself as individual brains and wondering at the universe that gave rise to it in the first place.