Copyright 1996-2000 by Donald R. Tveter, http://www.dontveter.com, commercial use is prohibited. This material cannot be quoted at length or posted elsewhere on the net or included in CD ROM collections. Short quotations are permitted provided proper attribution is given. But better yet, since I'm hardly an expert on the subject, don't quote me.
* "A new theory of the relationship of mind and matter" by David Bohm, Philosophical Psychology, VOL. 3, NO. 2, 1990, pp. 271-286 available online from an individual on AOL. (There must be an original online source for this somewhere, if you find it let me know.) In this article Bohm reviews the problems with the Bohr/Copenhagen interpretation of QM especially via the two slit experiment and then goes on to show how his version of QM compares with it. A fairly easy read.
* "Learning in Protozoa" by PB Applewhite in Biochemistry and Physiology of Protozoa Volume 1 edited by M Levandowsky and SH Hunter, Academic Press, 341-355, 1979.
* "Tube Escape Behavior of Paramecia", by PB Applewhite and FT Gardner, in Behav Biol 9:245-250, 1973.
* "Trial and Error Learning in Paramecium" by JW French in J Exp Psychol 26:609-613, 1940.
* "Spiral Motion of Paramecium Caudatum in a small capillary Glass Tube" by K Fukui and H Asai in J Protozool 23:559-563, 1976.
* Hameroff 1993, Stuart Hameroff, Judith E. Dayhoff, Rafael Lahoz-Beltra, Steen Rasmussen, Ezio M. Insinna and Djuro Koruga, "Nanoneurology and the Cytoskeleton: Quantum Signaling and Protein Conformational Dynamics as Cognitive Substrate", in Rethinking Neural Networks: Quantum Fields and Biological Data, editor Karl H. Pribram, International Neural Network Society Press and Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993.
* Here is a rather longish (56 pages) but fairly easy to understand article that argues that thinking is quantum mechanical: "Quantum Neural Computing" by Subhash C. Kak available for FTP from Louisiana State University. Besides considering QM it covers many AI topics like the Turing Test, animal intelligence and neural networks so its really quite a good background article on AI with the spin that conventional AI cannot work and QM is involved.
* Here is an even longer (73 pages) but INCREDIBLY interesting summary of biological neural networks, microtubules, quantum mechanics, gravity, superstrings and psychology from William James and Sigmund Freud: "Theory of Brain Function, Quantum Mechanics and Superstrings" by Dimitri Nanopoulos available from the Los Alamos National Laboratory Physics preprint archives. This is pretty easy reading as these things go. Nanopoulos gives a complete high level outline of how the brain operates that includes a theoretical mechanism for quantum mechanical action. Keep in mind that in addition to giving known facts Nanopoulos is also making PROPOSALS about how the known laws of Physics have to be modified to incorporate gravity and consciousness and these PROPOSALS are very new and are very far from being accepted by the Physics community at this point in time. BUT, should things work out along the lines indicated here then the Physics people will take over AI. EVEN IF what the quantum mechanical system does can be fairly closely modeled on conventional digital computers the Physics people will win the war of perception. Their outlook, their vocabulary and their methods will take over. The idea of the brain as a digital computer will be mentioned in the same sentence as other failed theories, like the Earth is flat, the Earth is the center of the Universe and fire is caused by phlogiston. A highly technical version of the theory can be found in an online article by Mavromatos and Nanopoulos.
* "On a Possible Connection of Non-Critical Strings to Certain Aspects of Quantum Brain Function" by D. V. Nanopoulos and N. E. Mavromatos available from Los Alamos National Laboratories This 9 page article is rather technical but it is still worth looking at for the sake of knowing where research is going. The two major threads here are one, the possibility of detecting the effects of quantum gravity on microtubules and two, a quantum mechanism for storing memories. The memory storage mechanism is similar to what Vitiello has proposed and what's going on is equally unintelligible to outsiders. Note: I had trouble printing the postscript version of this article because the last few lines went off the bottom of my deskjet printer. See also the online article by Mavromatos and Nanopoulos.
* "A Non-Critical String (Liouville) Approach to Brain Microtubules: State Vector Reduction, Memory Coding and Capacity" by N.E. Mavromatos and D.V. Nanopoulos available from Los Alamos National Laboratories. This is a 70 page highly technical version of the theory that can safely be ignored by normal people.
* "Microtubules: The neuronic system of the neurons?" by N.E. Mavromatos and D.V. Nanopoulos available from Los Alamos National Laboratories. This is a 20 page highly technical version of the theory that can safely be ignored by normal people.
* Quantum mechanics has potentially interesting properties to offer. For a fairly conventional example of what could be in the offing see the article: "Dissipation and Memory Capacity in the Quantum Brain Model", by Giuseppe Vitiello, in Intl. J. Mod. Physics B, in print, from Los Alamos National Laboratories. Understanding quantum physics is rough and I can only understand some of the plain text of this article yet this quantum mechanical model of memory has an important property that seems very human like: no matter how many memories this system stores you can always add one more without damaging any of the old ones, in effect you have an unlimited memory. This sounds like good news for the case based/memory based AI camp. I'd love to see commentary on this scheme. It strikes me that this is just about the right amount of memory you need for human level performance. I just cannot believe that all a person knows can be stored using neurons as the conventional thinking goes. Something more clever is needed and this could be it. But what is it? How does it work? Would someone who can understand this lay it out neatly enough that it could be programmed? I mean, give the memory simple little things, like A=1, B=2 and C=3 and show how it would retrieve the value of B on demand? Perhaps somebody working on a thesis in Physics could do this? For a little more on this theory see the two postings Vitiello made for the Quantum-D mailing list: Re: Quantum memory models? Re: Quantum memory models? (cont.) and the article Structure and Function
* "Structure and Function" from Los Alamos National Laboratories. This article is highly readable as it is in the form of a letter written to a philosopher. It says that quantum mechanics is not the right formalism to consider brain function but quantum field theory is worth exploring.
* "Quantum Dissipation and Neural Net Dynamics" is a 6 page paper from Los Alamos National Laboratories. This article is an attempt by the authors, Giuseppe Vitiello and Eliano Pessa to make the quantum memory model of Vitiello more specific and understandable however they failed. By page 5 there is a crude description of what is going on and it seems they actually implemented a program using simulated annealing for storing and retrieving data however there is still too much insider talk and not enough specifics for people outside of quantum mechanics to follow.
* "Life-time and Hierarchy of Memory in the Dissipative Quantum Brain Model" is a 4 page paper from Los Alamos National Laboratories. This article by Eleonora Alfinito and Giuseppe Vitiello looks at memory storage phenomena in the dissipative quantum model of the brain and how it would relate to aspects of human memory. Again, largely incoherent because it was written for people who understand quantum physics.
* "Dissipation and memory domains in the quantum model of brain" is a 10 page paper from Los Alamos National Laboratories. This article is by Eleonora Alfinito and Giuseppe Vitiello. Again, largely incoherent because it was written for people who understand quantum physics.
* "The dissipative quantum model of brain: how do memory localize in correlated neuron domains" is a 19 page paper from Los Alamos National Laboratories. This article is by Eleonora Alfinito and Giuseppe Vitiello. Again, largely incoherent because it was written for people who understand quantum physics.
* The Vitiello memory model is apparently quite ordinary in that it uses established principles to do the storage however quantum mechanics also seems to have the interesting property that information can move around the universe INSTANTLY. The Josephson article on this possibility is plain text and online: "Biological Utilization of Quantum Non-Locality", by Brian D. Josephson and Fotini Pallikari-Viras, available from Cambridge University, United Kingdom. Brian Josephson is a Nobel Prize winning Physicist who thinks that useful faster than light (non-local) quantum mechanical communication may be possible in biological systems. As QM articles go this is easy reading.
* As noted earlier in the book, Roger Penrose is one of those who suspects that thinking requires consciousness and consciousness somehow comes out of quantum mechanics. His books are not online however PSYCHE: an interdisciplinary journal of research on consciousness is scheduled to post reviews of Penrose's Shadows of the Mind from the United Kingdom. The last I looked nothing on this subject was there however I saw another URL for PSYCHE from Monash University, Australia that does have the commentary.
* "Is Mental Process Non-Computable?" by Henry P. Stapp available from Los Alamos National Laboratories. Stapp considers the argument of Penrose that certain things are non-computable. This is a 10 page article of mathematical arguments.
* "Quantum Mechanical Coherence, Resonance, and Mind" by Henry P. Stapp available from Los Alamos National Laboratories. Stapp argues that QM shows promise for explaining the human mind using a fair amount of QM oriented math.
* "The Hard Problem: A Quantum Approach" by Henry P. Stapp available from Los Alamos National Laboratories. A 28 page paper of mostly plain English that describes a high level model of the mind that incorporates Quantum Mechanics and consciousness.
* "Chance, Choice, and Consciousness: The Role of Mind in the Quantum Brain" by Henry P. Stapp available from Los Alamos National Laboratories. A 28 page paper of mostly plain English and a little math that considers the merit of modifying Quantum Mechanics so as to make consciousness have a role in nature. Consciousness would, as William James proposed, be a selecting agency. Quantum mechanical events would not be random but would be influenced by consciousness yet Stapp argues we would still get the same old QM formulas and results for non-conscious entities. (Don't trust me too much here!) Besides that I found the analogy between QM and hydrodynamics was insightful. Generally Stapp's papers are bland in the extreme however this one was fairly interesting even though there was a certain amount of obscure math and technical "gibberish".
* "Why Classical Mechanics Cannot Naturally Accommodate Consciousness But Quantum Mechanics Can" by Henry P. Stapp available from Los Alamos National Laboratories. A 28 page paper of mostly plain English prepared for a special issue of Psyche. It contains philosophical sorts of arguments that a classical digital computer cannot give rise to human mental experience but a quantum computer can.
* This html paper by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose Orchestrated Reduction of Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules from the University of Arizona explains microtubules and their theory of consciousness. It includes figures and a certain amount of math.
* This html paper by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose Conscious Events as Orchestrated Space-Time Selections from the University of Arizona explains their theory of consciousness. It includes figures and a certain amount of math.
* This article, Structure and Function by Vitiello was written to Patricia Churchland to explain why Quantum Mechanics (more correctly, he says Quantum Field Theory) is relevant to the study of consciousness and memory. It is an easy read.
* This article, On Quantum Theories of the Mind by Henry P. Stapp is a response to an earlier paper by a critic of quantum theories of the mind, fairly readable as these things go but not particularly enlightening.
* This article, Quantum Mechanics in Cell Microtubules: Wild Imagination or Realistic Possibility by N.E. Mavromatos and D.V. Nanopoulos is a highly technical investigation of the subject and includes a discussion of possible holographic properties.
* This article, Quantum Brain? by Andreas Mershin, Dimitri V. Nanopoulos, and Efthimios M.C. Skoulakis proposes a way microtubules might be used for learning. They are running exeriments on fruit flies to try and boost the theory. Also included is a discussion of quantum computing and how the microtubules might be involved. 37 pages.