A few evenings ago, while upgrading a few aspects of our advanced Mind/Brain program, my thoughts jumped into the distant past to a beautiful autumn day where I was seated with over 400 other conference attendees outside Pauling, New York. We were enjoying a most inspiring presentation by Dr. Norman Vincent Peal (author of "The Power of Positive Thinking"). During his story–filled talk the message was, "change your thoughts, change your life". He picked up a pen from the podium and asked a question, "Do you know how long it takes to change your mind?" He dropped the pen and the message was clear that he was emphasizing that thoughts could change instantly, and our life could follow in rapid transformation.
For decades, such ideas as postulated by Dr. Peal were largely ignored by traditional science. Today, to the benefit of all of us, science has waded into this mind–brain field of dreams in a big way. Dr. Jeffery Schwartz, a UCLA neuropsychiatrist and coauthor of "The Mind and the Brain", reveals the leading edge of neuroplasticity research which recounts almost magical restoration of movement to limbs and bodies paralyzed for over 40 years by stroke. The brain, it seems, if it receives sensory information from a limb that says "IÂ’m still here!" will assign an undamaged area of the brain to take control of the limbÂ’s motor needs and movement begins. Schwartz even adds his own research during which severely impaired OCD patients were taught to refer the cause of their uncontrollable reactions to the part of the brain that was over–activated as revealed by functional MRI. With some self–relaxation training and an expert dose of cognitive therapy, most of the patients experienced dramatic improvement in their symptoms.
Dr. Henry Stapp, a physicist, well–known for his work in quantum mechanics, has been publishing on the quantum physics of consciousness for over a decade. The current quantum view (always evolving) posits that all five string theories are just different points of view of the same field and are therefore probably compatible. Current quantum ideas include a multiverse of ten dimensions plus time. Against this backdrop and according to his own calculations, Dr. Stapp has identified the possibility that the brain itself could be a quantum field, or as others have stated, a quantum computer.
The way this might work, in the simplest terms, is to remember that a quantum field is composed of infinite possibilities. A mind, such as yours or mine, thinks a thought which begins to narrow the field of possibilities into a more focused or more limited number of probabilities. LetÂ’s call this Intention. As the mind continues to think on this Intention, the field narrows even more into a smaller and more limited and concentrated number of possibilities which we could call Attention. At some point, when Attention concentrates enough mental force, the intangible, and as yet, immeasurable, quantum field collapses into our more tangible material world and could suddenly appear as electrical thunderstorms in the brain. This staggering amount of neuronal electricity is now being rapidly decoded with the help of Quantitative EEG brain scans and the computer analysis of the rhythmic fluctuating brainwave patterns or neural nets.
So how could our brain be compared to or perhaps even be a quantum computer? The estimated number of neurons in the human brain range as high as 100 billion; while the truth is that we really donÂ’t know. Each neuron consists of a cell body, a single axon, and a host of dendrites. Electrical information flows from neuron to neuron via dendrite to axon. When you realize that every neuron could be part of many neural nets at the same time and then shift into a set of connections in microseconds, the number of possible connections, according to Stapp, could be incalculable. Unlimited possibilities is one of the properties of a quantum field.
From another perspective, we understand that a computer, governed by Newtonian principles, is operating on digital states that are either a 0 or a 1, i.e. a position of either on or off. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, states that "quantum superposition" occurs when an object simultaneously "possesses" two or more values for an observable quantity (i.e., on and off at the same time).
When you consider that a neuron has multiple dendrites and can be part of many neural nets or circuits concurrently, it seems entirely possible that neurons could be in "superposition" or multiple states simultaneously.
Does this sound like fuzzy science or just plain wrong? Consider that until just a few years ago, scientists believed and taught in our medical institutions that our brains did not produce new neurons.
Neuroscience has now firmly established that the brain indeed produces new cells until the day our body dies. Also, less than four weeks ago, Australian neuroscientists published research which has identified the tubular path these new cells follow from deep in the brain to a position near the olfactory bulb. I wonder if this is going to impact aroma therapy. By the way, have you been following the business news of the customized aroma environments that are being sold to our major U.S. retailers? My wife and I experienced it for ourselves the other day as we entered Nordstroms. I donÂ’t understand why reasonable business people would invest in such new and unproven things. I noticed the pleasant aroma but it didnÂ’t affect me at all. I reported my astute scientific observations to her as I was purchasing those "absolutely darling shoes" that I know will blend wonderfully with the new designer suit I just spotted for her across the aisle.
