{"id":31752,"date":"2016-11-07T12:47:44","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T20:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/can-quantum-physics-explain-consciousness"},"modified":"2017-04-26T13:23:16","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T20:23:16","slug":"can-quantum-physics-explain-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/can-quantum-physics-explain-consciousness","title":{"rendered":"Can Quantum Physics Explain Consciousness?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/can-quantum-physics-explain-consciousness.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new approach to a once-farfetched theory is making it plausible that the brain functions like a quantum computer.<\/p>\n<p>The mere mention of \u201cquantum consciousness\u201d makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects might indeed play some role in human cognition. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kitp.ucsb.edu\/mpaf\">Matthew Fisher<\/a>, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, raised eyebrows late last year when he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0003491615003243\">published a paper<\/a> in <em>Annals of Physics<\/em> proposing that the nuclear spins of phosphorus atoms could serve as rudimentary \u201cqubits\u201d in the brain\u2014which would essentially enable the brain to function like a quantum computer.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2016\/11\/quantum-brain\/506768\/?utm_source=atlfb\">http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2016\/11\/quantum-b...urce=atlfb<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new approach to a once-farfetched theory is making it plausible that the brain functions like a quantum computer. The mere mention of \u201cquantum consciousness\u201d makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,47,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-neuroscience","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31752"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56589,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31752\/revisions\/56589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}