Quantum psychology: is our mind really connected to the universe?

What is Quantum Psychology

The theory of quantum psychology was born in the 90s of the XX century. Its supporters believe that human behavior is inexplicable from the point of view of classical science: it cannot be predicted and interpreted on the basis of chemical and physical reactions alone. Therefore, the followers of the direction propose to apply the principles of quantum mechanics to the human mind.

Discipline owes its appearanceKrasilnikov G. T., Malchinsky F. V., Krachko E. BUT. On the scientific status of quantum psychology. Russian psychological journal discoveries that have significantly changed the views of modern science. Advances in quantum mechanics suggest that the world is much more complex than it seemed before, and the laws of the universe may be completely unknowable.

Cat Schrödinger, who is simultaneously alive and dead, entangled particles that can interact with each other from different edges The universe, and other related principles, quantum psychology extends to the consciousness of a person, his thinking and the process of acceptance solutions. She became a kind of attempt to reconcile the humanities and natural sciences.

Supporters of this discipline highlight a special - quantum - nature of consciousness. The basic principles were formulatedHameroff S., Penrose R. Orchestrated Objective Reduction of Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules: The "Orch OR" Model for Consciousness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A American anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff and English physicist-mathematician Roger Penrose in the 1990s. Together they drew up a model according to which brain activity is a quantum process that generates consciousness, which, in turn, has a wave character.

Penrose and Hameroff pay great attention to special microtubules located in the neurons of the brain, and believe that it is in them that quantum processes occur, which explain the unpredictability human thoughts.

In 2020, Roger Penrose receivedThe Nobel Prize in Physics 2020. Roger Penrose. The nobel prize Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery that the formation of black holes proves general relativity.

Hameroff and Penrose cameHameroff S., Penrose R. Consciousness in the universe: A review of the 'Orch OR' theory. Physics of Life Reviews to the conclusion that consciousness is associated with the entire universe. According to their ideas, if the waves of the mind and the waves of a physical object coincide, a person begins to think about this object. At the same time, changing thoughts can also change the properties of the object. Thus, consciousness allegedly directly affectsKrasilnikov G. T., Malchinsky F. V., Krachko E. BUT. On the scientific status of quantum psychology. Russian psychological journal to the outside world.

Quantum psychologists' views are in stark contrastKrasilnikov G. T., Malchinsky F. V., Krachko E. BUT. On the scientific status of quantum psychology. Russian psychological journal with the earlier accepted ideas that consciousness and thinking are physiological-chemical processes.

Also Penrose triedPenrose R. The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning computers, minds, and the laws of physics. Penguin Books. 1991 using the idea of ​​quantum consciousness to prove what to create Artificial Intelligenceanalogous to human is impossible.

Why quantum psychology is controversial

Despite its long history, controversy over the academic nature of the discipline is ongoingKrasilnikov G. T., Malchinsky F. V., Krachko E. BUT. On the scientific status of quantum psychology. Russian psychological journal still. Quantum psychologists themselves create an image of leading figures around themselves. Scienceswho are trying to slow down the conservative professorial community. Perhaps many of them believe it.

But not everything is so simple.

Quantum psychology is surrounded by mystical notions

The provisions of quantum mechanics, incomprehensible to the absolute majority of people, are often usedKrasilnikov G. T., Malchinsky F. V., Krachko E. BUT. On the scientific status of quantum psychology. Russian psychological journal to substantiate mysticism and esotericism - something that is supposedly impossible to explain from the point of view of reason. And it turns out that quantum psychology borders on extrasensory perception.

Similar concepts have arisen before. In the middle of the last century, there was a theory Kazhinsky B. B. Biological radio communication. - Kiev, 1963 "Biological radio communication", according to which consciousness works with the help of radio waves. Those who believed in the existence of telepathy argued Vasiliev L. L. Remote suggestion. M. 1962 that more subtle radiations are involved in the mind. Today, along with quantum consciousness, they are discussing no less pseudoscientificMineev V. AT. An introduction to the history and philosophy of science. M. 2014 torsion.

Under the guise of disciplines masquerading as scientific knowledge (for example, “cognitive psychophysics A. P. Cognitive psychophysics. - Rostov n / a, 2006 "), A belief in paranormal phenomena such as transpersonal experiences or remote treatment.

Other pseudoscientists, such as alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra, popularizeDeepak C. Ageless body, timeless mind: the quantum alternative to growing old. New York. 1997 ideas of "quantum healing". Chopra triesPark R. L. Voodoo medicine in a scientific world. After the Science Wars: Science and the Study of Science. - Routledge, 2005 explain Ayurveda - a system of Indian folk healing methods - in terms of quantum mechanics.

The combination of quantum mechanics and psychology is similar to similar processes occurring with synergetics. Some researchers are also trying to apply its principles in the humanities, giving rise to a new pseudosynergetics pseudoscience.Gubin V.B. Pseudosynergetics is the latest pseudoscience. In Defense of Science No. 1. It was Boldachev A. AT. Innovations. Judgments in line with the evolutionary paradigm. SPb. 2007 and with classical mechanics, the theories of Darwin and Einstein, and cybernetics.

Penrose and Hameroff's hypotheses criticized

Despite their great weight in the scientific community, Roger Penrose, as well as his colleague Stuart Hameroff, did not escape criticism of their hypotheses in the field of psychology. RowMcKemmish L. K., Reimers J. R., McKenzie R. H. et al. Penrose-Hameroff orchestrated objective-reduction proposal for human consciousness is not biologically feasible. Physical Review E; Landau L. J. Penrose's Philosophical Error. Concepts for Neural Networks; Clarke P. G. H. Neuroscience, quantum indeterminism and the Cartesian soul. Brain and Cognition; Jedlicka P. Revisiting the Quantum Brain Hypothesis: Toward Quantum (Neuro) biology? Frontiers in molecular neuroscience chemists, physicists, mathematicians, neurospecialists and biologists believe that there is no evidence of the quantum nature of consciousness. The arguments of Penrose and Hameroff about the connection between the mind and objects of the physical world have been refuted by numerous studies.Kikkawa M., Ishikawa T., Nakata T., et al. Direct visualization of the microtubule lattice seam both in vitro and in vivo. The Journal of cell biology; Kikkawa M., Metlagel, Z. A molecular "zipper" for microtubules. Cell; Binmöller F. J., Müller C. M. Postnatal development of dye-coupling among astrocytes in rat visual cortex. Glia; De Zeeuw C. I., Hertzberg E. L., Mugnaini E. The dendritic lamellar body: a new neuronal organelle putatively associated with dendrodendritic gap junctions. The Journal of neuroscience: the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

The main problem with the concept is that it does not take into account the speeds at whichTegmark M. Importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes. Physical review quantum processes - about 10⁻¹³–10⁻²⁰ seconds. Neurons the brain simply cannot grasp them. For example, the excitation of nerve cells is much slower and takes about 10⁻¹–10⁻³ seconds.

Another big discrepancy in quantum psychology appearsBrooks M. Is quantum physics behind your brain's ability to think? New scientist when considering the quantum processes themselves. The fact is that all their specific features (confusion, interconnectedness, uncertainty, and others) are preserved only under ideal conditions: at low temperatures and in the absence of movement. Any impact, such as heat or vibration, returns the quantum process to the laws of classical mechanics. This, by the way, is one of the major obstacles to the creation of quantum computers. Therefore, it is very unlikely that a consciousness with such properties can exist in a warm human brain, which, moreover, is constantly moving.

Still, new research is coming out in the field of quantum consciousness.

There are a number of scientific studies that, although they do not reveal the mystical connections of the mind with The universe, but come to the conclusion that quantum theory is able to explain to some extent the work of our consciousness.

You have to start from afar. So maybeBall P. Is photosynthesis quantum ‑ ish? Physics World, quantum processes take place during photosynthesis in plants. Another example is the ability of birds to navigate long flights along the Earth's magnetic field. How they do it is not fully known, but there is an assumption that this is due to quantum effects. Some recent researchChae K. S., Oh I. T., Lee S. H., Kim S. C. Correction: Blue light-dependent human magnetoreception in geomagnetic food orientation. PLOS ONE; Wang C. X., Hilburn I. A., Wu D-A. et al. Transduction of the Geomagnetic Field as Evidenced from alpha-Band Activity in the Human Brain. eNeuro led to the conclusion that humans can also be sensitive to magnetic fields.

And that's not all. So, scientists from China noticedLi N., Lu D., Yang L. et al. Nuclear Spin Attenuates the Anesthetic Potency of Xenon Isotopes in Mice: Implications for the Mechanisms of Anesthesia and Consciousness. Anesthesiologythat substances with different quantum characteristics, for example, different spin numbers This is the intrinsic angular momentum of an elementary particle, which has a quantum nature. - Approx. author. , differently affect human consciousness. Similar experimentsSechzer J. A., Lieberman K. W., Alexander G. J. et al. Aberrant parenting and delayed offspring development in rats exposed to lithium. Biological Psychiatry 1980s with the psychotropic drug lithium showed that its different formulations affect parenting behavior rats. That is, the quantum characteristics of the substances we use can affect the brain.

Based on this, the American physicist Matthew Fisher suggestedFisher M. P. A. Quantum Cognition: The possibility of processing with nuclear spins in the brain. Annals of Physics, what in brain there may be molecules with a spin that allows them to interact with neurons at a quantum level. Fisher himself, however, noted that his theory is largely speculative, and therefore requires further experiments.

Another line of research suggests using the mathematical apparatus of quantum mechanics to understand how we make decisions.

For example, Chinese scientists at workLi J. A., Dong D., Wei Z. et al. Quantum reinforcement learning during human decision-making. Nature human behavior, published by the journal Nature Human Behavior, concluded that logical mistakes in thinking people are well described by the formulas of quantum probability theory. And the staff of St. Petersburg ITMO University and specialists from the UK and Japan in a joint studyKhrennikov A., Basieva I., Pothos E. M. et al. Quantum probability in decision making from quantum information representation of neuronal states. Scientific Reports in general, they claim that with the help of the mathematical apparatus of the theory of quantum uncertainty, it is possible to describe the unpredictability of human behavior.

That is, if you believe these conclusions, complex physical theorems can describe the randomness of our actions. At the same time, it is not at all necessary that our brain works according to the principles of quantum mechanics.

While these works still need to be tested by the scientific community. But none of them speaks of the fact that the mind is connected with the Universe or that consciousness is capable of changing reality. Therefore, do not let charlatans using incomprehensible terminology deceive you.