" Current wisdom in classical neuroscience suggests that the only direct action of the electric field in neurons is upon voltage-gated ion channels which open and close their gates during the passage of ions. The intraneuronal biochemical activities are thought to be modulated indirectly either by entering into the cytoplasmic ions that act as second messengers, or via linkage to the ion channels enzymes. In this paper we present a novel possibility for the subneuronal processing of information by cytoskeletal microtubule tubulin tails and we show that the local electromagnetic field supports information that could be converted into specific protein tubulin tail conformational states. Long-range collective coherent behavior of the tubulin tails could be modelled in the form of solitary waves such as sine-Gordon kinks, antikinks or breathers that propagate along the microtubule outer surface, and the tubulin tail soliton collisions could serve as elementary computational gates that control cytoskeletal processes.." Although the authors opt more for a quantum mind concept they treat various phenomenons that can be linked to a electromagnetic mind theory. " Usually biologists are attracted only by the dynamical instability of microtubules because it leads to a reorganization of the cytoskeleton and therefore a reorganization of the cellular morphology and functions. However in highly differentiated cells such as neurons there is a stable population of cytoskeletal microtubules that could act as waveguides for subneuronally flowing information." " The inclusion of the tubulin tails in the biophysical model of microtubules allowed Georgiev (2003), Georgiev et al. (2004), Georgiev and Glazebrook (2006, 2007) to reveal a novel possibility for long-range microtubular communication in the form of tubulin tail sine-Gordon solitons. It was suggested that collision of kinks, antikinks and breathers could perform a form of subneuronal computation, which in turn is outputted by the tubulin tail energase action that controls MAP attachment and kinesin dynamics." " The strong coupling between the protein conformation and its hydration shell (Levitt and Sharun, 1988) is our motivation towards the mathematical model of the solitonic interaction between the local electromagnetic field in neurons, the water molecule dipoles from the tubulin tail hydration shells forming a 4-5 nm layer on the microtubule surface and the tubulin tails themselves. The tubulin tail conformational solitons could propagate along the outer microtubular surface providing a dissipationless mechanism for transmission of information." They also view biophoton emissions as a consequence of water order: " Among the long-range order creating phenomena induced by the interaction between the water dipoles and the local electromagnetic field we may find a specific one in which the collective dynamics of the water electric dipole (WEDP) field in the spatial region of linear dimension up to 50 µm can give rise to a cooperative emission of coherent photons with induced energy by certain systems external to the quantum system of the electromagnetic field and the WEDP field." |
Last modified on 15-Mar-16 |