This lecture was organized by support of Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies, Russian House and Polytech Museum of Moscow. The nature of consciousness, the mechanism by which it occurs in the brain and its place in the universe are unknown. In the mid 1990’s Sir Roger Penrose and I suggested that consciousness depends on biologically ‘orchestrated’ coherent quantum processes in collections of microtubules within brain neurons, that these quantum processes correlate with, and regulate, neuronal activity, and that the continuous Schrodinger evolution of each such process terminates in accordance with the specific Diosi-Penrose (‘DP’) scheme of objective reduction (‘OR’) of the quantum state. ‘Orchestrated’ OR activity (‘Orch OR’) is taken to result in moments of full conscious awareness and/or choice. The DP form of OR is related to the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and space-time geometry, so Orch OR suggests a connection between brain biomolecular processes and the basic structure of the universe. I will review Orch OR in light of criticisms, presenting experimental evidence for 1) hierarchical microtubule quantum resonances (terahertz, gigahertz, megahertz, kilohertz), and 2) anesthetics preventing consciousness through quantum actions on microtubules. Further novel Orch OR suggestions include 1) topological quantum bits (‘qubits’) intrinsic to microtubule geometry, 2) interference ‘beat frequencies’ of fast (e.g. megahertz) microtubule vibrations producing slower electro-encephalographic (EEG) correlates of consciousness, 3) mental state alterations caused by brain stimulation with megahertz mechanical vibrations (ultrasound), and 4) OR-based primitive feelings prompting life’s origin and evolution. Orch OR is rigorous, consistent with neuronal-level approaches and better supported experimentally than other theories of consciousness. Reference: Hameroff & Penrose (2014) Phys. Life Rev., 11(1):39-78 Визит Стюарта Хамероффа в Москву был организован нашим Центром. Лекция стала возможной благодаря поддержке политехнического музея в лице Ольги Вад и Russian House в лице Татьяны Гинзбург.

http://www.scienceandnonduality.com/ Physics and particularly quantum physics are often invoked in discussions of consciousness. But what can physics actually tell us? I will first discuss what physics does not tell us: physics does not provide any criteria with which to distinguish conscious systems from non-conscious systems. As far as physics is concerned, consciousness is like free will – it characterizes either nothing or everything. Since we are conscious, it is reasonable to regard everything else as conscious, too. If we make this assumption, the question of interest becomes: what systems are conscious of what? Physics is fundamentally a theory of interaction, so it can tell us a lot about this. The first thing it tells us is that being conscious of something requires expending energy. How much energy a system can expend determines how much it can be conscious of. This energy requirement has surprising consequences, some of which I will describe.