ARECENT GROUNDBREAKING EXPERIMENT in which anesthesia was administered to rats has convinced scientists that tiny structures in the rodents’ brains are responsible for the experience of consciousness. To pull it off, these microscopic hollow tube structures, called “microtubules,” don’t rely on our everyday flavor of classical physics. Instead, experts believe, microtubules perform incredible operations in the quantum realm. Citing the work of earlier researchers, the study infers that the same kind of quantum operations are likely happening in human brains.
During their rat brain experiments, scientists at Wellesley College in Massachusetts gave the rodents isoflurane, a type of inhaled general anesthetic used to induce and maintain unconsciousness for medical procedures. One group of drugged rats also received microtubule-stabilizing drugs, while the other did not. The researchers discovered that the microtubule-stabilizing molecules kept the rats conscious for longer than the non-stabilized rats, which more quickly lost their “righting reflex,” or the ability to restore normal posture, according to their findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal eNeuro in August 2024.
The Wellesley study is significant because the physical source of consciousness has been a mystery for decades. It’s a major step toward verifying a theory that our brains perform quantum operations, and that this ability generates our consciousness—an idea that’s been gaining traction over the past three decades.
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American Buddhist Net 