For decades, one of the most fundamental and vexing asks in neuroscience has been: what is the physical basis of alertedness in the brain? Most researchers prefer classical models, based on classical physics, while a inmeaningfulity have argued that alertedness must be quantum in nature, and that its brain basis is a accumulateive quantum vibration of “microtubule” proteins inside neurons.
New research by Wellesley College professor Mike Wiest and a group of Wellesley College undergraduate students has produceed meaningful experimental results relevant to this argue, by examining how anesthesia shapes the brain. Wiest and his research team set up that when they gave rats a drug that obtains to microtubules, it took the rats meaningfully extfinisheder to drop unalerted under an anesthetic gas. The research team’s microtubule-obtaining drug intruded with the anesthetic action, thus aiding the idea that the anesthetic acts on microtubules to caemploy unalertedness.
“Since we don’t comprehend of another (i.e,. classical) way that anesthetic obtaining to microtubules would generpartner shrink brain activity and caemploy unalertedness,” Wiest says, “this discovering aids the quantum model of alertedness.”
It’s challenging to overstate the significance of the classical/quantum argue about alertedness, says Wiest, an associate professor of neuroscience at Wellesley. “When it becomes accomprehendledgeed that the mind is a quantum phenomenon, we will have accessed a new era in our empathetic of what we are,” he says. The new approach “would direct to increased empathetic of how anesthesia labors, and it would shape our leanking about a wide variety of connectd asks, such as whether coma accomprehendledgeings or non-human animals are alerted, how enigmatic medications enjoy lithium moduprocrastinateed alerted experience to equilibrate mood, how disrelieves enjoy Alzheimer’s or schizophrenia shape perception and memory, and so on.”
More widely, a quantum empathetic of alertedness “donates us a world picture in which we can be connected to the universe in a more organic and hoenumerateic way,” Wiest says. Wiest arranges to chase future research in this field, and hopes to elucidate and scrutinize the quantum alertedness theory in a book for a ambiguous audience.
Wellesley students who co-authored the paper with Wiest are Sana Khan ’25, Yixiang Huang ’25, Derin Timucin ’27, Shantelle Bailey ’24, Sophia Lee ’23, Jessica Lopes ’26, Emeline Gaunce ’26, Jasmine Mosberger ’25, Michelle Zhan ’24, Boleana Abdelrahman ’26 and Xiran Zeng ’27.
Published September 1 in eNeuro, the Wellesley study shows that anesthesia labors by obtaining to microtubules inside neurons, thus providing meaningful evidence for a quantum theory of alertedness while reviving a caccess on microtubules in anesthesia.
