WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:04.240 Imagine waking up tomorrow morning, walking into your bathroom, turning 2 00:00:04.240 --> 00:00:05.879 on the light and just looking. 3 00:00:05.599 --> 00:00:08.240 In the mirror, right, just a normal morning routine, exactly. 4 00:00:08.240 --> 00:00:11.000 You look at your eyes, and you know, you think 5 00:00:11.039 --> 00:00:13.839 about the brain sitting just behind them, and for your 6 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:16.679 entire life. The scientific consensus, I mean, your high school 7 00:00:16.679 --> 00:00:20.199 biology teacher, the documentaries, you watch, the textbooks, they've all 8 00:00:20.239 --> 00:00:23.120 told you a very specific story about what that organ 9 00:00:23.160 --> 00:00:23.719 actually is. 10 00:00:23.839 --> 00:00:25.320 They tell you it's a machine. 11 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:30.719 Right, a biological machine, a highly sophisticated meat computer essentially. 12 00:00:30.839 --> 00:00:32.079 Yeah, that's the classic view. 13 00:00:32.159 --> 00:00:36.320 It's this dense, wet network of neurons firing electrical impulses, 14 00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:42.560 moving chemical transmitters across tiny gaps, processing sensory data, and somehow, 15 00:00:42.759 --> 00:00:47.799 through sheer computational complexity, it's generating the vivid, continuous experience of. 16 00:00:47.759 --> 00:00:50.119 Being you, right, just number crunching in the dark. 17 00:00:50.479 --> 00:00:54.159 But imagine discovering that this core assumption is fundamentally flawed. 18 00:00:54.719 --> 00:00:57.159 Like imagine finding out that the brain inside your head 19 00:00:57.240 --> 00:01:00.719 is actually a highly tuned quantum antenna. Wow. Yeah, that 20 00:01:00.759 --> 00:01:03.719 it's an instrument that doesn't just crunch data, but is 21 00:01:03.799 --> 00:01:08.040 intimately physically connected to the fundamental geometry of the universe itself. 22 00:01:08.280 --> 00:01:12.000 It completely dismantles our standard model of reality. I mean 23 00:01:12.040 --> 00:01:14.840 we are talking about shifting from a view where human 24 00:01:14.879 --> 00:01:21.280 beings are these isolated, accidental biological machines generating private realities 25 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:24.959 in our skulls. Shifting from that to a framework where 26 00:01:24.959 --> 00:01:28.719 we are active receivers, where the actual act of consciousness 27 00:01:28.760 --> 00:01:31.760 is an interaction with the bedrock of space time. It 28 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:36.159 forces us to rethink the origin of every thought, every memory, 29 00:01:36.280 --> 00:01:38.239 literally every moment of awareness. 30 00:01:38.439 --> 00:01:41.640 And that is the staggering reality we are unpacking today. 31 00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:42.879 Welcome to thrilling Threads. 32 00:01:42.959 --> 00:01:43.719 Glad to be here. 33 00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:47.400 We are taking a massive stack of recent paradigm shattering 34 00:01:47.400 --> 00:01:52.120 scientific papers, research that bridges the gap between hard neuroscience, 35 00:01:52.719 --> 00:01:57.560 quantum physics, and what we used to dismiss as ancient philosophy, 36 00:01:58.159 --> 00:02:00.560 and we are synthesizing all of it for you today. 37 00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:03.480 It's a lot to cover, but it's fascinating, it really is. 38 00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:06.959 We're looking at a thirty year war in the scientific community. 39 00:02:07.319 --> 00:02:11.800 On one side, you have the entrenched classic materialist view 40 00:02:12.120 --> 00:02:15.680 of neuroscience, the meat computer, the meat computer exactly, and 41 00:02:15.719 --> 00:02:20.319 on the other, a seemingly impossible quantum theory that was ridiculed. Yeah, 42 00:02:20.400 --> 00:02:24.599 just push to the absolute fringes of academia completely exile. Yeah. 43 00:02:24.639 --> 00:02:26.439 And the reason we're talking about this now, the reason 44 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:28.919 so vital for you to hear this, is that this 45 00:02:29.120 --> 00:02:35.919 impossible theory just scored a definitive, potentially indisputable victory in 46 00:02:35.960 --> 00:02:37.759 a laboratory at Wellesley College. 47 00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:40.800 Yeah. To truly grasp the weight of what happened at Wellesley, 48 00:02:40.879 --> 00:02:43.680 we really need to understand the fortress they were attacking. 49 00:02:43.879 --> 00:02:44.919 Lay it out for us. 50 00:02:45.159 --> 00:02:49.120 Well. For over a century, the scientific establishment has operated 51 00:02:49.159 --> 00:02:52.879 on the materialist assumption. This is the idea that everything 52 00:02:52.919 --> 00:02:57.840 in the universe, including the rich subjective tapestry of human consciousness, 53 00:02:58.080 --> 00:02:59.680 can be entirely explained by. 54 00:02:59.560 --> 00:03:03.199 Classical right, physical matter interacting in predictable ways. 55 00:03:02.960 --> 00:03:06.120 Exactly measurable, predictable classical physics. 56 00:03:06.319 --> 00:03:09.039 Now, I want to push on that materialist model right 57 00:03:09.080 --> 00:03:12.520 out of the gate, because, frankly, it makes intuitive sense 58 00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:13.199 to most of us. 59 00:03:13.319 --> 00:03:13.919 Sure it does. 60 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:16.800 You know, we look at a brain scan an fMRI, 61 00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:19.680 and we see regions lighting up when a person thinks 62 00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:22.479 about a dog or moves their hand. It looks like circuitry. 63 00:03:22.520 --> 00:03:26.039 It looks exactly like circuitry, and you know, the easy 64 00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:30.000 problems of consciousness, which by the way, are scientifically monumental 65 00:03:30.039 --> 00:03:33.960 but conceptually straightforward. They involve mapping. 66 00:03:33.599 --> 00:03:36.120 That circuitry, like finding out which wire does what right. 67 00:03:36.159 --> 00:03:39.800 We can map the motor cortex to our movement. We 68 00:03:39.840 --> 00:03:44.360 can map the occipital lobe to visual processing. The materialist 69 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:47.800 framework basically says that if you have billions of neurons 70 00:03:47.960 --> 00:03:51.840 and trillions of synaptic connections firing in complex patterns, well, 71 00:03:52.080 --> 00:03:54.840 consciousness just inevitably emerges from that complexity. 72 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:58.080 But there was a massive explanatory gap there. It's it's 73 00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:01.840 what the philosopher David Chalmers called the hard problem of consciousness. 74 00:04:01.919 --> 00:04:03.560 Hard problem, yes. 75 00:04:03.680 --> 00:04:07.159 And I always struggle with how mainstream science just sort 76 00:04:07.159 --> 00:04:10.080 of accepted that gap. They essentially say, okay, we have 77 00:04:10.120 --> 00:04:14.520 electricity flowing through sodium and potassium channels, and therefore you 78 00:04:14.599 --> 00:04:16.480 experience the vivid color red. 79 00:04:16.639 --> 00:04:18.519 Right. There's a leap there, a huge leap. 80 00:04:19.079 --> 00:04:22.120 How does the physical movement of ions translate into a 81 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:23.160 subjective feeling? 82 00:04:23.759 --> 00:04:26.839 It doesn't logically speaking. I mean, the hard problem highlights 83 00:04:26.879 --> 00:04:31.959 that exact disconnect between objective physical processes and subjective experience. 84 00:04:32.399 --> 00:04:35.120 Why does it actually feel like something to exist, right, 85 00:04:35.279 --> 00:04:38.879 We could theoretically have a brain that processes all that data, 86 00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:42.959 navigates the world, avoids danger, but is completely in the dark. 87 00:04:42.839 --> 00:04:44.040 Like a philosophical zombie. 88 00:04:44.160 --> 00:04:48.920 Exactly, no inner life, just biological programming. Under strict materialism, 89 00:04:49.040 --> 00:04:51.199 consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon. 90 00:04:51.439 --> 00:04:53.439 So it's sort of like the shadow cast by a 91 00:04:53.480 --> 00:04:54.120 moving car. 92 00:04:54.360 --> 00:04:55.480 That's a great way to put it. 93 00:04:55.560 --> 00:04:58.040 The shadow doesn't drive the car, it's just an inevitable 94 00:04:58.079 --> 00:05:01.720 byproduct of the car being there. Turns on, the heat radiates, 95 00:05:01.720 --> 00:05:05.279 the shadow falls, but the shadow has zero causal power. 96 00:05:05.759 --> 00:05:09.720 That is the textbook materialist view, and for decades, if 97 00:05:09.720 --> 00:05:12.399 you questioned it, if you pushed back at all, you 98 00:05:12.439 --> 00:05:14.839 were accused of injecting magic into science. 99 00:05:15.040 --> 00:05:15.399 Wow. 100 00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:19.680 Prominent neuroscientists literally argue that consciousness is simply an illusion 101 00:05:19.759 --> 00:05:23.160 generated by the brain to help the organism survive. They 102 00:05:23.199 --> 00:05:27.000 insisted that once we comprehensively map the connectum every single 103 00:05:27.040 --> 00:05:29.639 neural pathway, the hard problem will just. 104 00:05:29.639 --> 00:05:32.600 Dissolve, which feels so intellectually incomplete. It's like saying that 105 00:05:32.639 --> 00:05:35.879 studying the mechanical gears of a clock with a microscope 106 00:05:36.079 --> 00:05:39.000 will eventually reveal the abstract concept of time. 107 00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:40.680 Right, you're looking at the wrong level of. 108 00:05:40.680 --> 00:05:46.480 Reality and into this rigid, uncompromising landscape. Step two figures 109 00:05:46.519 --> 00:05:51.279 who fundamentally challenged the core assumption of neuroscience, Roger Penrose 110 00:05:51.439 --> 00:05:52.319 and Stuart Hammeron. 111 00:05:52.600 --> 00:05:55.480 Yeah, and Roger Penrose brings immediate gravity to this discussion. 112 00:05:55.519 --> 00:05:57.959 We are not talking about some fringe Internet theorists here, No, 113 00:05:58.040 --> 00:06:01.439 I'm definitely not. He is a Nobel law a mathematical 114 00:06:01.439 --> 00:06:05.160 physicist whose work with Stephen Hawking fundamentally shaped our entire 115 00:06:05.279 --> 00:06:07.399 understanding of black holes and relativity. 116 00:06:07.519 --> 00:06:09.639 So a heavyweight, a massive heavyweight. 117 00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:13.920 But Penrose turned his mathematical rigor toward the human mind, 118 00:06:14.439 --> 00:06:18.600 largely because he was convinced by Godle's incompleteness theorems that 119 00:06:18.759 --> 00:06:21.920 human understanding cannot be entirely algorithmic. 120 00:06:22.040 --> 00:06:23.279 Okay, unpack that a little jit. 121 00:06:23.399 --> 00:06:27.439 Sure, He realized we can understand uncomputable truths, things that 122 00:06:27.480 --> 00:06:31.680 a strict step by step algorithm could never solve. Therefore, 123 00:06:31.759 --> 00:06:36.000 he argued, the brain simply cannot be a standard classical computer. 124 00:06:36.040 --> 00:06:38.439 Okay, let's unpack this. So he looked at the brain 125 00:06:38.519 --> 00:06:42.600 and realized standard physics couldn't account for our cognitive abilities. 126 00:06:43.199 --> 00:06:46.759 But Penrose is a physicist, right, and not a biologist. Correct. 127 00:06:46.920 --> 00:06:50.040 So how did he pinpoint where this non computable quantum 128 00:06:50.079 --> 00:06:53.680 activity was actually happening inside a wet, messy human body. 129 00:06:53.759 --> 00:06:56.839 Well, he needed a biological mechanism, which is exactly where 130 00:06:56.920 --> 00:07:00.680 Stuart Hammroof enters the picture, the anesthesiologist. That's right. Hamros 131 00:07:00.680 --> 00:07:03.680 spends his entire life turning consciousness off and on. He 132 00:07:03.720 --> 00:07:07.079 read Penrose's work and reached out with a proposition see 133 00:07:07.160 --> 00:07:11.480 hammroov Its spent years looking at single celled organisms like parametia. Okay, 134 00:07:11.519 --> 00:07:15.839 a paramecium has no brain, It has no neurons, zero synapses. 135 00:07:15.560 --> 00:07:17.759 Nothing that looks like a classical computer network. 136 00:07:17.800 --> 00:07:22.319 Nothing. Yet it swims, avoids obstacles, it finds food, it learns, 137 00:07:22.399 --> 00:07:23.079 and it meets. 138 00:07:23.439 --> 00:07:27.480 Wait. Really, if the materialist model says intelligence and awareness 139 00:07:27.480 --> 00:07:31.519 come from networks of neurons, a single celled organism shouldn't 140 00:07:31.519 --> 00:07:33.560 be able to do any of that exactly. 141 00:07:34.199 --> 00:07:36.439 Hammeroff asked how they do it, and he pointed to 142 00:07:36.480 --> 00:07:39.800 their setoskeleton. Inside every cell of your body, there is 143 00:07:39.839 --> 00:07:45.199 this structural scaffolding made of tiny cylindrical polymers called microtubules. 144 00:07:45.360 --> 00:07:46.839 Ok, microtubules, Yeah. 145 00:07:46.639 --> 00:07:49.680 They give the cell it shape. But Hamroov noticed that 146 00:07:49.720 --> 00:07:52.480 the structure of these microtubules, which are made of these 147 00:07:52.639 --> 00:07:56.399 peanut shaped proteins called tubulin, arranged in a repeating lattice, 148 00:07:56.560 --> 00:07:58.959 looked exactly like a computational matrix. 149 00:07:59.040 --> 00:07:59.879 So they can bind force. 150 00:08:00.279 --> 00:08:03.720 They did. The physicists looking for a quantum mechanism in 151 00:08:03.720 --> 00:08:07.800 the brain and the anesthesiologist who found a microscopic computational 152 00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:12.879 lattice inside the cells. Together they developed orchestrated objective reduction 153 00:08:13.199 --> 00:08:17.399 or ORCHRAR. They claimed that microtubules aren't just structural two 154 00:08:17.439 --> 00:08:19.759 by fours holding up the cell wall, they are actually 155 00:08:19.879 --> 00:08:21.040 quantum processors. 156 00:08:21.279 --> 00:08:26.160 Their central thesis was revolutionary, right, that every subjective experience, 157 00:08:26.279 --> 00:08:30.360 every memory, every flash of intuition is actually the resolution 158 00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:36.480 of a quantum computation happening across billions of microtubules entangled 159 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:37.639 across your entire brain. 160 00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:38.559 That's the claim. 161 00:08:38.679 --> 00:08:40.039 Okay, I have to stop you there and play the 162 00:08:40.120 --> 00:08:44.039 role of the mainstream neurosciences from nineteen ninety five, because 163 00:08:44.039 --> 00:08:48.960 the immediate reaction to this is just absolute dismissive skepticism. 164 00:08:49.039 --> 00:08:49.919 Oh, without a doubt. 165 00:08:50.039 --> 00:08:54.000 When we talk about quantum coherence particles existing in a 166 00:08:54.080 --> 00:08:58.960 multiple states entanglement. We're talking about phenomena that are incredibly, 167 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:00.279 incredibly fragile. 168 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:03.080 Extremely fragile. I mean, to build a quantum computer today, 169 00:09:03.320 --> 00:09:08.039 tech companies require massive dilution refrigerators. They have to isolate 170 00:09:08.080 --> 00:09:11.600 the quantum bits in these intense vacuums, cooling them to 171 00:09:11.720 --> 00:09:14.799 just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, totally 172 00:09:14.840 --> 00:09:17.600 shielded from any electromagnetic interference. 173 00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:19.759 Because if a single stray photon hits the quibit. 174 00:09:19.519 --> 00:09:22.440 The quantum state collapses. Actually it's called decoherence. 175 00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:25.120 And then you look at the human brain. It is 176 00:09:25.240 --> 00:09:28.639 ninety eight point six degrees fahrenheit, it is filled with 177 00:09:28.759 --> 00:09:33.639 saline fluid, it's pulsating with blood flow, massive electrical discharges 178 00:09:33.679 --> 00:09:34.600 and thermal chaos. 179 00:09:34.679 --> 00:09:35.240 It's a mess. 180 00:09:35.320 --> 00:09:38.960 It is the ultimate, warm, wet, and noisy environment. The 181 00:09:39.039 --> 00:09:44.080 idea that a delicate quantum superposition could somehow survive in 182 00:09:44.120 --> 00:09:48.120 that biological soup for the milliseconds required to influence neuro 183 00:09:48.240 --> 00:09:52.080 firing seems well, frankly, it seems physically absurd. 184 00:09:52.240 --> 00:09:56.039 You have just perfectly articulated the warm, wet and noisy objection. 185 00:09:56.440 --> 00:09:58.639 And let me tell you. It was a devastating critique 186 00:09:58.639 --> 00:10:02.279 at the time. I can imagine physicists ran calculations suggesting 187 00:10:02.320 --> 00:10:05.039 that quantum states in the brain would decohere in ten 188 00:10:05.159 --> 00:10:09.399 to the power of negative thirteen seconds, leading meaning trillions 189 00:10:09.440 --> 00:10:12.399 of times, too fast to have any impact on biological 190 00:10:12.440 --> 00:10:14.480 processes or human thought whatsoever. 191 00:10:14.639 --> 00:10:16.960 So the scientific community essentially just laughed them out of 192 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:17.840 the room pretty much. 193 00:10:17.879 --> 00:10:22.159 They acknowledged Penrose's genius and astrophysics, sure, but concluded he 194 00:10:22.200 --> 00:10:24.159 had fundamentally misunderstood biology. 195 00:10:24.279 --> 00:10:27.159 They sent the theory into exile for nearly three decades. 196 00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:31.399 They really did. It was relegated to the fringes, viewed 197 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:36.759 as an elegant but entirely unprovable philosophical fantasy. It kind 198 00:10:36.759 --> 00:10:39.879 of became a cautionary tale about physicists straying too far 199 00:10:39.919 --> 00:10:40.799 from their lane. 200 00:10:41.240 --> 00:10:44.639 But you know, the beauty of the scientific method is 201 00:10:44.639 --> 00:10:49.120 that it is ultimately agnostic to human dogma. Absolutely, you 202 00:10:49.120 --> 00:10:51.519 can exile a theory all you want, but if it 203 00:10:51.559 --> 00:10:54.840 makes a testable prediction, someone is eventually going to test 204 00:10:54.879 --> 00:10:57.360 it in a lab. And the test for Orchuar didn't 205 00:10:57.399 --> 00:10:59.720 come from a particle accelerator, No it didn't. It came 206 00:10:59.759 --> 00:11:02.720 from one of the most common yet least understood procedures 207 00:11:02.720 --> 00:11:04.519 in modern medicine, anesthesia. 208 00:11:04.919 --> 00:11:08.759 Right, we have been using anesthetic gases for nearly two centuries. 209 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:12.879 Millions of surgeries are performed globally every year under general anesthesia. 210 00:11:12.960 --> 00:11:15.679 It's a cornerstone of modern medicine. Yet, if you ask 211 00:11:15.720 --> 00:11:20.159 an anithesiologist what the fundamental molecular mechanism is like, how 212 00:11:20.159 --> 00:11:24.879 these gases obliterate subjective consciousness, they cannot give you a 213 00:11:24.919 --> 00:11:25.799 definitive answer. 214 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:29.000 I find that deeply unsettling and fascinating. It is both. 215 00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:30.960 I mean, you go into an operating room, they place 216 00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:33.919 a mask over your face, you inhale a gas, and 217 00:11:33.960 --> 00:11:37.759 your mind just completely vanishes. You don't dream, you don't 218 00:11:37.759 --> 00:11:41.399 experience the passage of time. You just cease to exist subjectively, 219 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:42.600 and then you wake up and recovery. 220 00:11:42.679 --> 00:11:43.679 It's a clipping a switch. 221 00:11:44.039 --> 00:11:47.559 Exactly. How is it possible that we use these chemicals 222 00:11:47.679 --> 00:11:51.720 every single day without knowing the specific switch they are 223 00:11:51.720 --> 00:11:52.519 flipping in the brain. 224 00:11:52.679 --> 00:11:56.919 Well, historically science relied on something called the Meyer Overton correlation. 225 00:11:58.200 --> 00:12:00.440 It just noted that the potency of an anim esthetic 226 00:12:00.480 --> 00:12:04.639 gas correlated with its solubility in oil or lipids. So 227 00:12:04.759 --> 00:12:06.679 for a long time, the assumption was that the gas 228 00:12:06.720 --> 00:12:10.120 simply dissolved into the lipid membranes of neurons, causing them 229 00:12:10.120 --> 00:12:13.240 to swell and somehow block electrical channels. 230 00:12:13.480 --> 00:12:17.000 Just a crude physical jamming of the biological surguitry. 231 00:12:16.720 --> 00:12:20.279 Right, But that theory fell apart under modern scrutiny. We 232 00:12:20.360 --> 00:12:23.279 found that certain gases dissolve perfectly into lipids but do 233 00:12:23.399 --> 00:12:25.039 not cause anesthesia at all. 234 00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:26.360 Oh interesting, And. 235 00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:29.279 The gases don't fit into a specific protein receptor like 236 00:12:29.320 --> 00:12:32.519 a key in a lock either. It is a profoundly 237 00:12:32.600 --> 00:12:34.480 mysterious pharmacological effect. 238 00:12:34.759 --> 00:12:38.639 But Penrose and hammerf had a highly specific prediction based 239 00:12:38.639 --> 00:12:40.559 on their exiled theory, didn't they They did. 240 00:12:41.080 --> 00:12:44.480 They argued that if consciousness is fundamentally generated by quantum 241 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:49.399 coherence inside microtubules, then anesesia must work by interrupting that 242 00:12:49.519 --> 00:12:51.120 specific quantum state. 243 00:12:51.320 --> 00:12:51.559 Okay. 244 00:12:51.759 --> 00:12:55.519 They proposed that anesthetic gas molecules bind to hydrophobic or 245 00:12:55.519 --> 00:12:59.720 water repelling pockets inside the tubulin proteins. This disrupts the 246 00:12:59.799 --> 00:13:03.840 quant interactions without destroying the structural integrity of the cell. 247 00:13:04.200 --> 00:13:07.840 Now that is a bold testable claim, very testable because 248 00:13:07.840 --> 00:13:12.919 if anesthesias switches off consciousness by destabilizing the microtubules, then 249 00:13:12.919 --> 00:13:15.120 you should be able to alter the effect of anesthesia 250 00:13:15.200 --> 00:13:17.720 by introducing a drug that does the exact opposite. 251 00:13:17.960 --> 00:13:21.840 Yes, a microtubule stabilizer. And this brings us out of 252 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:25.919 the theoretical wilderness and into the laboratory at Wellesley College. Finally, right, 253 00:13:26.159 --> 00:13:29.799 This is the e neurostudy led by neuroscientist Michael Wist, 254 00:13:29.840 --> 00:13:32.480 which was published and rigorously reviewed leading up to twenty 255 00:13:32.519 --> 00:13:35.519 twenty six. The elegance of this experiment lies in its 256 00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:37.759 direct challenge to the materialist model. 257 00:13:38.080 --> 00:13:40.559 Break down the methodology for us. I really want to 258 00:13:40.639 --> 00:13:43.720 understand exactly how they tested a thirty year old quantum 259 00:13:43.720 --> 00:13:44.639 theory on rats. 260 00:13:44.840 --> 00:13:48.399 Okay, so the Wellesley team took two cohorts of rats. 261 00:13:48.720 --> 00:13:52.279 The primary behavioral marker they used is called the writing reflex. 262 00:13:52.559 --> 00:13:53.919 The writing reflex what is. 263 00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:55.879 That if you take a conscious rat and place it 264 00:13:55.919 --> 00:13:59.159 on its back, it will immediately instinctively twist its body 265 00:13:59.200 --> 00:14:00.000 and write itself. 266 00:14:00.279 --> 00:14:00.799 Makes sense. 267 00:14:01.039 --> 00:14:05.919 It requires sensory awareness, motor control, and continuous neurological feedback. 268 00:14:06.320 --> 00:14:10.120 So it's the gold standard proxy for basic consciousness in 269 00:14:10.200 --> 00:14:11.080 animal models. 270 00:14:11.120 --> 00:14:13.840 So when a rat goes under anesthesia, it loses that 271 00:14:13.919 --> 00:14:15.840 writing reflex and just lies on its back. 272 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:19.639 Correct. So the researchers administered a standard dose of isoflurane, 273 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:24.240 a very common anesthetic gas, to the control group. As expected, 274 00:14:24.399 --> 00:14:26.480 the rats lost their writing reflex. 275 00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:28.080 And went unconscious and the second group. 276 00:14:28.200 --> 00:14:31.039 The second group received the exact same dose of isoflurane, 277 00:14:31.159 --> 00:14:35.360 but they were also given a specific microtubule stabilizing drug. 278 00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:38.120 Okay, so a drug that locks the microtubules in place. 279 00:14:38.320 --> 00:14:40.879 Exactly. It's a chemical agent designed to bind to the 280 00:14:40.879 --> 00:14:45.600 tubulin lattice and lock it into a stable conformation. Now, 281 00:14:45.799 --> 00:14:50.080 if the materialist model is correct, and anesthesia works by 282 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:54.519 broadly disrupting neural membranes or synapses, the stabilizer should have 283 00:14:54.759 --> 00:14:56.200 zero effect, right. 284 00:14:56.120 --> 00:14:58.840 Because, according to the standard model, the microtubules are just 285 00:14:58.919 --> 00:15:03.440 dumb scaffolding. Stabilizing the scaffolding shouldn't stop the electrical circuitry 286 00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:04.200 from shutting down. 287 00:15:04.279 --> 00:15:07.720 Exactly, the rats should pass out at the exact same rate. 288 00:15:08.039 --> 00:15:09.080 So what did the data show. 289 00:15:09.399 --> 00:15:12.519 The data struck right at the heart of the materialist paradigm. 290 00:15:13.039 --> 00:15:17.559 The rats that receive the microtubul stabilizer remain conscious, significantly longer. 291 00:15:17.799 --> 00:15:18.120 Wow. 292 00:15:18.240 --> 00:15:22.240 They continuously demonstrated the writing reflex, basically fighting off the 293 00:15:22.240 --> 00:15:25.120 effects of the anesthesia, long after the control rats had 294 00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:26.320 gone completely limp. 295 00:15:26.559 --> 00:15:27.360 That's incredible. 296 00:15:27.399 --> 00:15:30.559 And furthermore, when the anesesia was turned off, the stabilized 297 00:15:30.639 --> 00:15:33.320 rats recovered their consciousness remarkably faster. 298 00:15:33.639 --> 00:15:36.080 I really want to pause and emphasize the implications here 299 00:15:36.120 --> 00:15:39.399 for you listening. In cognitive neuroscience, we are drowning in 300 00:15:39.480 --> 00:15:40.399 correlational data. 301 00:15:40.559 --> 00:15:41.240 We really are. 302 00:15:41.480 --> 00:15:43.559 We put someone in an fMRI, we ask them to 303 00:15:43.600 --> 00:15:46.799 solve a math problem, and we watch blood flow increase 304 00:15:46.799 --> 00:15:49.840 in the pre funnel cortex. That tells us where activity 305 00:15:49.879 --> 00:15:52.639 is happening, but it doesn't prove how consciousness is generated. 306 00:15:53.480 --> 00:15:57.120 But this rat experiment is fundamentally different. This is causal. 307 00:15:57.320 --> 00:16:01.159 It is entirely causal. By introducing an agent that mechanically 308 00:16:01.200 --> 00:16:05.240 targets the internal protein lattice of the cell, leaving the macroscopic, 309 00:16:05.320 --> 00:16:10.080 electrical channels and synaptic membranes totally alone, they directly manipulated 310 00:16:10.080 --> 00:16:11.200 the state of consciousness. 311 00:16:11.200 --> 00:16:11.799 It's wild. 312 00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:17.320 It experimentally validates the exact mechanism Penrosenhammeroff predicted decades ago. 313 00:16:17.559 --> 00:16:20.360 It proves that microtubules are not just dumb support beams. 314 00:16:20.399 --> 00:16:24.279 They are intimately causally linked to the generation or maintenance 315 00:16:24.279 --> 00:16:26.559 of a conscious state exactly. But as mind blowing as 316 00:16:26.559 --> 00:16:30.000 the Wellesley study is, one experiment on rodents doesn't overturn 317 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:33.879 a century of scientific dogma. I mean, to survive a 318 00:16:33.879 --> 00:16:38.000 paradigm shift needs corroboration across different disciplines. We need the 319 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:40.360 physics to catch up to the biology. 320 00:16:39.799 --> 00:16:42.519 And the physics did catch up. The dam finally broke 321 00:16:42.600 --> 00:16:45.440 in late twenty twenty five and early twenty twenty six. 322 00:16:45.639 --> 00:16:46.159 What happened? 323 00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:49.399 A massive review published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness 324 00:16:49.639 --> 00:16:54.919 synthesized the emerging physical evidence. We basically moved from behavioral 325 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:58.679 studies on rats to direct spectroscopic and biophysical measurements of 326 00:16:58.679 --> 00:16:59.399 the living brain. 327 00:17:00.200 --> 00:17:04.599 The review talked about finding direct physical evidence of macroscopic 328 00:17:04.759 --> 00:17:09.000 quantum entangled states in the brain. Walk us through that. 329 00:17:09.359 --> 00:17:13.519 Because the phrase macroscopic entanglement sounds like a paradox in physics, 330 00:17:13.640 --> 00:17:14.559 it does so. 331 00:17:14.920 --> 00:17:19.079 Entanglement is the phenomenon where particles become interconnected such that 332 00:17:19.160 --> 00:17:22.200 the state of one instantly influences the state of the other, 333 00:17:22.519 --> 00:17:23.759 regardless of distance. 334 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:26.519 Einstein's spooky action at a distance. 335 00:17:26.400 --> 00:17:29.039 Right, and usually this is observed at the atomic level. 336 00:17:29.319 --> 00:17:33.359 Macroscopic entanglement means this quantum coherence is scaling up, spanning 337 00:17:33.400 --> 00:17:37.599 across thousands or millions of neurons simultaneously. The review found 338 00:17:37.640 --> 00:17:41.039 that these widespread quantum states correlate directly with working memory 339 00:17:41.039 --> 00:17:43.359 performance and conscious awareness in humans. 340 00:17:43.440 --> 00:17:45.759 But the critics are going to scream about the warm, wet, 341 00:17:45.799 --> 00:17:48.960 and noisy problem again. I mean, how is it physically 342 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:52.440 possible for entanglement to survive the thermal chaos of a 343 00:17:52.480 --> 00:17:53.400 living human brain. 344 00:17:53.799 --> 00:17:56.920 Well, this is where the physics literature gets truly revolutionary. 345 00:17:57.599 --> 00:17:59.960 We have to look at a paper published in October 346 00:18:00.039 --> 00:18:06.559 twenty twenty five regarding microtubules acting as nanoscale spintronic oscillators. 347 00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:09.279 Spintronic oscillators, I need you to break that down. A 348 00:18:09.319 --> 00:18:12.400 lot of us know about electronics moving an electrons charge 349 00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:15.319 through a wire. What is kentronics and how does it 350 00:18:15.400 --> 00:18:16.720 solve the heat problem? 351 00:18:16.799 --> 00:18:20.160 So, in traditional electronics you rely on moving the physical 352 00:18:20.279 --> 00:18:23.079 charge of an electron, which generates heat and is highly 353 00:18:23.119 --> 00:18:25.480 susceptible to external thermal. 354 00:18:25.160 --> 00:18:27.839 Noise, right, like a laptop getting hot exactly. 355 00:18:28.319 --> 00:18:32.279 But electrons also have a quantum property called spin. You 356 00:18:32.319 --> 00:18:35.440 can think of it as intrinsic angular momentum and orientation 357 00:18:35.559 --> 00:18:40.119 of up or down. Okay, Spintronics involves processing information using 358 00:18:40.160 --> 00:18:43.319 the spin state of the electron without necessarily moving the 359 00:18:43.359 --> 00:18:44.240 electron itself. 360 00:18:44.279 --> 00:18:47.519 Wait, so you are transferring information without the physical friction 361 00:18:47.640 --> 00:18:49.839 and chaotic bumping around of electrical charges. 362 00:18:49.880 --> 00:18:52.960 Exactly. And the twenty twenty five paper demonstrated that the 363 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:56.640 specific helical structure of the microtubule lattice acts as a 364 00:18:56.640 --> 00:19:01.240 topological insulator, meaning the physical arrangement of the tubulin proteins 365 00:19:01.279 --> 00:19:05.160 forces the electron spins into a synchronized rhythm an oscillator. 366 00:19:05.880 --> 00:19:09.039 This structure is mathematically designed to protect the spin state 367 00:19:09.039 --> 00:19:10.720 from environmental decoherence. 368 00:19:10.880 --> 00:19:12.839 Here's where it gets really interesting. I want to make 369 00:19:12.839 --> 00:19:16.960 sure I grasp this mechanism. Think about standard fiber optic 370 00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:19.559 cables that we use for the Internet. Okay, sure, we 371 00:19:19.720 --> 00:19:22.359 lay these cables across the bottom of the ocean. The 372 00:19:22.519 --> 00:19:28.599 environment is incredibly destructive, crushing pressure, freezing temperatures, shifting tectonic plates. 373 00:19:29.119 --> 00:19:32.799 But the delicate pulses of light carrying our data survive 374 00:19:32.920 --> 00:19:36.200 the journey across the Atlantic because the cable is engineered 375 00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:40.759 with specific reflective cladding that creates a protected internal corridor. Yes, 376 00:19:41.279 --> 00:19:44.680 the chaos outside cannot interact with the photon inside. 377 00:19:44.759 --> 00:19:48.039 That is a phenomenal analogy. The research basically indicates that 378 00:19:48.079 --> 00:19:52.440 biological evolutions spent billions of years engineering microscopic fiber optic 379 00:19:52.559 --> 00:19:53.839 cables inside our cells. 380 00:19:53.920 --> 00:19:54.440 Wow. 381 00:19:54.480 --> 00:19:58.039 The microtubules are structurally and electronically shaped to shield the 382 00:19:58.079 --> 00:20:00.799 delicate quantum states from the thermal noise of the brain. 383 00:20:01.279 --> 00:20:03.480 They act as living wave guides. 384 00:20:03.519 --> 00:20:07.440 Living waveguides. That completely flips the script. The critics looked 385 00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:10.079 at the wet, noisy brain and said quantum physics can't 386 00:20:10.119 --> 00:20:14.279 happen here. But they underestimated the sheer elegance of biology. 387 00:20:14.319 --> 00:20:17.680 They really did. The brain isn't too messy for quantum mechanics. 388 00:20:17.920 --> 00:20:20.400 It is a perfectly engineered quantum laboratory. 389 00:20:20.599 --> 00:20:23.960 Right. The warm, wet, and noisy objection was based on 390 00:20:24.039 --> 00:20:29.519 human engineering limitations. We need massive refrigerators to stabilize quibits 391 00:20:29.880 --> 00:20:34.359 because we're using brute force. Biology uses structural geometry and 392 00:20:34.400 --> 00:20:35.440 topological protection. 393 00:20:35.720 --> 00:20:39.319 Okay, so the biological pathway is established by the Wellesley experiment. 394 00:20:39.880 --> 00:20:43.319 The physical mechanism is explained by spintronic oscillators and living 395 00:20:43.400 --> 00:20:47.000 wave guides. Yes, if we accept this data, if we 396 00:20:47.039 --> 00:20:49.839 accept that the brain is utilizing quantum mechanics in the 397 00:20:49.880 --> 00:20:54.160 microtubule lattice, what does this actually do to our model 398 00:20:54.160 --> 00:20:57.000 of reality? It changes everything because we aren't just tweaking 399 00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:00.880 a textbook diagram here. We are questioning the fundamentalature of existence. 400 00:21:01.039 --> 00:21:03.519 We really are. We are looking at a radical three 401 00:21:03.559 --> 00:21:05.880