Check › Is the brain a quantum computer? Does consciousness collapse the wavefunction?
Is the brain a quantum computer? Does consciousness collapse the wavefunction?
Myth · What the Bleep Do We Know!? (2004), "quantum healing" books, and the Penrose-Hameroff proposal
Name only. The word is real. The physics in the scene is not.
What the scene or the claim says
Consciousness is a quantum effect, and observing something with your mind is what makes reality pick an outcome.
What is real
All chemistry is quantum mechanics, brains included. The open question is narrower: whether coherent superpositions do computational work in neurons. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff proposed a version, Orch OR, and it is a real, if minority, hypothesis.
What stops it working that way
Max Tegmark's 2000 estimate put decoherence times for the specific superpositions such models propose at 10⁻¹³ to 10⁻²⁰ seconds, against 10⁻³ to 10⁻¹ seconds for neural firing. Hagan, Hameroff and Tuszynski replied in 2002 that he had modelled a different scenario from the one Orch OR proposes, and argued for much longer times. No experiment has shown quantum computation in a brain.
In most readings of quantum mechanics, "measurement" needs a physical interaction that records the outcome, and no mind is required. Whether that fully settles the question depends on the interpretation.
If you wanted it to work
Quantum biology is a live field: radical-pair chemistry as a possible compass in birds, and quantum effects in some enzymes, are being tested. If someone measured long-lived coherence in neural tissue that changes how neurons fire, the story would change. A measurement, and not another argument, is what is missing.