QUANTUM Physics in Neuroscience AND PSYCHOLOGY: A NEUROPHYSICAL MODEL OF
MIND/BRAIN INTERACTION

Jeffrey M. Schwartz ^1^

Henry P. Stapp ^2^

Mario Beauregard ^3,\ 4,\ 5\*^

1 UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, 760 Westwood Plaza, C8-619 NPI Los
Angeles, California 90024-1759, USA. E-mail: <jmschwar@ucla.edu>

2 Theoretical Physics Mailstop 5104/50A Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-8162,
USA. Email: hpstapp@lbl.gov

3 Département de Psychologie, Centre de Recherche en Neuropsychologie
Expérimentale et Cognition (CRENEC), Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128,
succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3C 3J7.

4 Département de Radiologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128,
succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3C 3J7.

5 Centre de recherche en sciences neurologiques (CRSN), Université de
Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada,
H3C 3J7.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

> \*Correspondence should be addressed to: Mario Beauregard, Département
> de Psychologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succursale
> Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3C 3J7. Tel (514) 340‑3540
> #4129; Fax: (514) 340‑3548; E-mail: <mario.beauregard@umontreal.ca>

**ABSTRACT**

  Neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behavior
generally posits that brain mechanisms will ultimately suffice to
explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems
from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles
and fields, and that all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience can
therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these elements.
Thus terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or experiential content
(e.g., \"feeling,\" \"knowing,\" and \"effort\") are not included as
primary causal factors. This theoretical restriction is motivated
primarily by ideas about the natural world that have been known to be
fundamentally incorrect for more than three quarters of a century.
Contemporary basic physical theory differs profoundly from classical
physics on the important matter of how the consciousness of human agents
enters into the structure of empirical phenomena. The new principles
contradict the older idea that local mechanical processes alone can
account for the structure of all observed empirical data. Contemporary
physical theory brings directly and irreducibly into the overall causal
structure certain psychologically described choices made by human agents
about how they will act. This key development in basic physical theory
is applicable to neuroscience, and it provides neuroscientists and
psychologists with an alternative conceptual framework for describing
neural processes. Indeed, due to certain structural features of ion
channels critical to synaptic function, contemporary physical theory
must in principle be used when analyzing human brain dynamics. The new
framework, unlike its classical-physics-based predecessor is erected
directly upon, and is compatible with, the prevailing principles of
physics, and is able to represent more adequately than classical
concepts the neuroplastic mechanisms relevant to the growing number of
empirical studies of the capacity of directed attention and mental
effort to systematically alter brain function.

**Key index words**: mind, consciousness, brain, neuroscience,
neuropsychology, quantum mechanics.

\"\[T\]he only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that
recognizes *both* sides of reality \-\-- the quantitative and the
qualitative, the physical and the psychical \-\-- as compatible with
each other, and can embrace them simultaneously.\"

       

Wolfgang Pauli, The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific
Theories of Kepler

1\. Introduction   

The introduction into neuroscience and neuropsychology of the extensive
use of functional brain imaging technology has revealed, at
the empirical level, an important causal role of directed attention
in cerebral functioning. The identification of brain areas involved in
a wide variety of information processing functions concerning
learning, memory and various kinds of symbol manipulation has been the
subject of extensive and intensive investigation (See Toga & Mazziotta
2000). Neuroscientists consequently now have a reasonably good working
knowledge of the role of a variety of brain areas in the processing of
complex information.  But, valuable as these empirical studies are, they
provide only the data for, not the answer to, the critical question of
the causal relationship between the aspects of empirical studies that
are described in psychological terms and those that are described in
neurophysiological terms. In the vast majority of cases investigators
simply assume that measurable-in-principle properties of the brain are
the only factors needed to explain eventually the processing of the
psychologically described information that occurs in neuropsychological
experiments. This  privileging of physically describable brain
mechanisms as the core,  and indeed final, explanatory vehicle for the
processing of every kind of  psychologically described data is the
foundational assumption of almost all  contemporary biologically based
cognitive neuroscience.

  It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that there is at least
one type of information processing and manipulation that does not
readily lend itself to explanations that assume that all final causes
are subsumed within brain, or more generally, central nervous system
(CNS) mechanisms. The cases in question are those in which the conscious
act of willfully altering the mode by which experiential information is
processed itself changes, in systematic ways, the cerebral mechanisms
utilized. There is a growing recognition of the theoretical importance
of applying experimental paradigms that employ directed mental effort in
order to produce systematic and predictable changes in brain function
(e.g., Beauregard et al. 2001; Ochsner et al. 2002). These willfully
induced brain changes are generally accomplished through training in,
and the applied use of, cognitive reattribution and the
attentional re-contextualization of conscious experience. Furthermore,
an accelerating number of studies in the neuroimaging literature
significantly support the thesis that, again, with appropriate training
and effort, people can systematically alter neural circuitry associated
with a variety of mental and physical states that are frankly
pathological (Schwartz et al. 1996; Schwartz 1998; Musso et al. 1999;
Paquette et al. 2003). A recent review of this and the related
neurological literature has coined the term \"self-directed
neuroplasticity\" to serve as a general description of the principle
that focused training and effort can systematically alter cerebral
function in a predictable and potentially therapeutic manner (Schwartz &
Begley 2002).

From a theoretical perspective perhaps the most important aspect of
this line of research is the empirical support it provides for a
new science-based way of conceptualizing the interface
between mind/consciousness and brain. Until recently virtually
all attempts to understand the functional activity of the brain have
been based, at least implicitly, on some principles of classical physics
that have been known to be fundamentally false for three quarters of
a century. According to the classical conception of the world, all
causal connections between observables are explainable in terms of
mechanical interactions between material realities.  But this
restriction on modes of causation is not fully maintained by the
currently applied principles of physics, which consequently offer an
alternative conceptual foundation for the scientific description and
modeling of the causal structure of self-directed neuroplasticity.

The advantages for neuroscience and neuropsychology of utilizing the
conceptual framework of *contemporary* physics, as opposed to that of
*classical* physics, stem from five basic facts. First, terms such as
\"feeling,\" \"knowing\" and \"effort,\" because they are intrinsically
mentalistic and experiential, cannot be described exclusively in terms
of material structure. Second, in order to explain the observable
properties of large physical systems that depend sensitively upon the
behaviors of their atomic constituents the founders of  contemporary
physical theory were led to introduce explicitly into *the basic causal
structure of physics* certain important choices made by human beings
about how they will act. Third, within this altered conceptual framework
these choices are described in mentalistic (i.e., psychological)
language. Fourth, terminology of precisely this kind is critically
necessary for the design and execution of the experiments in which the
data demonstrating the core phenomena of self-directed neuroplasticity
are acquired and described. Fifth, the injection of psychologically
described choices on the part of human agents into the causal
theoretical structure can be achieved for experiments in neuroscience by
applying the same mathematical rules that were developed to account for
the structure of phenomena in the realm of atomic science.

The consequence of these facts is that twentieth century physics, in
contrast to classical physics, provides a rationally coherent pragmatic
framework in which the psychologically and  neurophysiologically
described aspects of the neuroscience experiments  mentioned above are
causally related to each other in mathematically specified ways. Thus
contemporary physics allows the data from the rapidly emerging field of
self-directed neuroplasticity to be described and understood in a way
that is more rationally coherent, scientific, and useful than what
is permitted by theories in which all causation is required to be
fundamentally mechanical.

To explicate the physics of the interface between mind/consciousness and
the physical brain, we shall in this article describe in detail how the
quantum mechanically based causal mechanisms work, and show why it is
necessary in principle to advance to the quantum level to achieve an
adequate theory of the neurophysiology of volitionally
directed activity. The reason, basically, is that classical physics is
an approximation to the more accurate quantum theory, and that
this classical approximation *eliminates the causal efficacy of our
conscious efforts* that these experiments empirically manifest.

It will also be explained how certain structural features of
ion conductance channels critical to synaptic function *entail* that
the classical approximation fails in principle to cover the dynamics of
a human brain. Quantum dynamics *must be used in principle*.
Furthermore, once the transition to the quantum description is made, the
principles of quantum theory must, in order to maintain rational
consistency and coherency, be used to link the quantum physical
description of the subject's brain to his stream of conscious
experiences. The conscious choices by human agents thereby become
injected nontrivially into the causal interpretation of neuroscience and
neuropsychology experiments. This caveat particularly applies to those
experimental paradigms in which human subjects are required to perform
decision-making or attention-focusing tasks that require conscious
effort.

2\. Practical ramifications of the altered conception of the
causal structure of self-directed neuroplasticity

  Clarity is required about the sorts of neuroscientific reasoning that
remain coherent, given the structure of modern physics,
and, contrastingly, the types of assertions that can now be viewed
as the residue of a materialistic bias stemming from a superceded
physics. Entirely acceptable are *correlational analyses* concerning the
relationship between mentalistic data and neurophysiological mechanisms.
Examining the qualitative and quantitative aspects of brain function,
and doing detailed analyses of how they relate to the data of
experience, obtained through increasingly sophisticated means of
psychological investigation and subject self-report analysis (e.g., the
entire Sep/Oct 2003 issue of *Journal of Consciousness Studies*, Volume
10, Number 9-10, is dedicated to these questions), are completely in
line with fundamental physics. These activities are the core of
neuropsychological science.  What is not justified is the presumption,
either tacit or explicit, that *all* aspects of experience examined and
reported are necessarily causal consequences solely of brain
mechanisms.  The structure of contemporary physics entails no such
conclusion.  This is particularly relevant to data from first person
reports concerning active willfully directed attentional focus, and
especially to data pertaining to which aspects of the stream of
conscious awareness a subject chooses to focus on when making
self-directed efforts to modify and/or modulate the quality and beam of
attention. In such cases the structure of orthodox quantum physics
implies that the investigator is not justified in assuming that the
focus of attention is determined wholly by brain mechanisms that are in
principle completely well defined and mechanically determined. Conscious
effort itself can, justifiably within science, be taken to be a primary
variable whose complete causal origins may be *untraceable* *in
principle*, but whose causal efficacy in the physical world can be
explained on the basis of the laws of physics.

As already emphasized, the cognitive frame in which
neuroscience research, including research on cerebral aspects of
behavior, is generally conducted contains within it the assumption that
brain mechanisms are in principle fully sufficient to explain all of
the observed phenomena.  In the fields of functional neuroimaging this
has led to experimental paradigms that focus primarily on changes in
brain activation as primary variables used to explain
whatever behavioral changes are observed \-\-- including ones understood
as involving essentially cognitive and emotional responses. As long as
one is investigating phenomena that are mostly passive in nature this
may be fully justified.  A person is shown a picture depicting
an emotionally or perhaps a sexually arousing scene.  The relevant
limbic and/or diencephalic structures are activated.  The investigator
generally concludes that the observed brain activation has some
intrinsic causal role in the emotional changes reported (or perhaps, the
hormonal correlates of those changes).

All is well and good, as far as it goes. And all quite passive from
the experimental subject\'s perspective  \-\-- all that\'s really
required on his or her part is to remain reasonably awake and alert, or,
more precisely, at least somewhat responsive to sensory inputs.  But
when, as happens in a growing number of studies, the subject makes an
active response aimed at systematically *altering* the nature of the
emotional reaction \-\-- for example, by actively performing a cognitive
reattribution \-\-- then the demand that the data be understood solely
from the perspective of brain-based causal mechanism is a severe and
counter-intuitive constraint. It is noteworthy that this demand for an
entirely brain-based causal mechanism is nullified, in the quantum model
developed here, by a specified quantum effect, which will be described
in detail below.

Surmounting the limitations imposed by restricting one's ideas to the
failed concepts of classical physics can be especially important when
one is investigating how to develop improved methods for altering the
emotional and cerebral responses to significantly stressful external or
internally generated stimuli. An incorrect assignment of the causal
roles of neurophysiologically and mentalistically described variables
can impact negatively on a therapist\'s selection of a course of
treatment, on a patient\'s capacity to recover, and on a
neuroscientist\'s design of clinically relevant research programs.

In the analysis and development of clinical practices
involving psychological treatments and their biological effects the
possession and use of a rationally coherent and physically allowable
conception of the causal relationship between mind and brain (or, if one
prefers, mentalistic and  neurophysiological variables) is critical. If
one simply accepts the standard presumption that all aspects of
emotional response are passively determined by neurobiological
mechanisms, then the theoretical development of genuinely effective
self-directed psychological strategies that produce real neurobiological
changes can be impeded by the fact that one is using a theory that
excludes from the dynamics what logically can be, and in our model
actually are, key causal elements, namely our willful choices.

The clinician\'s attention is thus directed away from what can be in
many cases, at the level of actual practice, a powerful determinant of
action, namely the subject\'s psychologically (i.e., mentalistically)
framed  commitment to act or think in specific ways. The therapist tends
to becomes locked into the view that the *psychological* treatment of
ailments *caused by* *neurobiological impairments* is not a realistic
goal.

There is already a wealth of data arguing against this view. 
For instance, work in the 1990\'s on patients with obsessive
compulsive disorder demonstrated significant changes in caudate nucleus
metabolism  and the functional relationships of the
orbitofrontal cortex-striatum-thalamus circuitry in patients who
responded to a psychological treatment utilizing cognitive reframing and
attentional refocusing as key aspects of the therapeutic intervention
(for review see Schwartz & Begley 2002). More recently work by
Beauregard and colleagues (Paquette et al. 2003) have demonstrated
systematic changes in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and
parahippocampal gyrus after cognitive-behavioral therapy for spider
phobia, with brain changes significantly related to both objective
measurements and subjective reports of fear and aversion.  There are now
numerous reports on the effects of self-directed regulation of emotional
response, via cognitive reframing and attentional re-contextualization
mechanisms, on cerebral function (e.g., Beauregard et al. 2001; Lévesque
et al. 2003; Ochsner et al. 2002; Paquette et al. 2003; Schwartz et al.
1996).

  The brain area generally activated in all the studies done so far
on the self-directed regulation of emotional response is the
prefrontal cortex, a cortical region also activated in studies of
cerebral correlates of willful mental activity, particularly those
investigating self-initiated action and the act of attending to one\'s
own actions (Spence & Frith 1999; Schwartz & Begley 2002).  There is
however one aspect of willful mental activity that seems particularly
critical to emotional self-regulation and that seems to be the critical
factor in it\'s effective application \-\-- the factor of focused
dispassionate self-observation that, in a rapidly growing number of
clinical psychology studies, has come to be called mindfulness or
mindful awareness (Segal et al. 2002)

The mental act of clear-minded introspection and observation, variously
known as mindfulness, mindful awareness, bare attention, the impartial
spectator, etc. is a well-described psychological phenomenon with a long
and distinguished history in the description of human mental states
(Nyanaponika 2000). The most systematic and extensive exposition is in
the canonical texts of classical Buddhism preserved in the
Pali language, a dialect of Sanskrit. Because of the critical importance
of this type of close attentiveness in the practice of Buddhist
meditation, some of its most refined descriptions in English are in
texts concerned with meditative practice (although it is of critical
importance to realize that the mindful mental state does not require any
specific meditative practice to acquire, and is *certainly not* in any
sense a \"trance-like\" state).

One particularly well-established description, using the name bare
attention, is as follows:

\"Bare Attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what
actually happens *to* us and *in* us at the successive moments of
perception. It is called \'Bare\' because it attends just to the bare
facts of a perception as presented either through the five physical
senses or through the mind . . . without reacting to them.\"
(Nyanaponika 1973, p.30)

Perhaps the essential characteristic of mindful observation is that you
are just watching, observing all facts, both inner and outer,
very calmly, clearly, and closely. To sustain this attentional
perspective over time, especially during stressful events, invariably
requires the conscious application of effort.

  A working hypothesis for ongoing investigation in
human neurophysiology, based on a significant body of preliminary data,
is that the mental action of mindful awareness specifically modulates
the activity of the prefrontal cortex. Because of the well established
role of this cortical area in the planning and willful selection
of self-initiated responses (Spence & Frith 1999; Schwartz & Begley
2002), the capacity of mindful awareness, and by implication all
emotional self-regulating strategies, to specifically modulate activity
in this critical brain region has tremendous implications for the fields
of mental health and related areas.

It might be claimed that the designs and executions of successful
clinical practices (and of informative neuropsychological experiments)
that depend on the idea of the causal efficacy of conscious effort, and
which fit so well into the quantum conceptualization that actually
explains the causal efficacy of these efforts, could just as well be
carried out within the conceptual framework in which the causal efficacy
of willfull effort is an illusion, or is something very different from
what it intuitively seems to be. But such a claim is not easy to defend.
Simple models that are consistent with basic intuition and lead directly
to experimentally demonstrable conclusions are better than
philosophically intricate ones that lead to the same conclusions. Of
course, if it could be argued that the simple model could not be true
because it violates the basic principles of physics, while the more
intricate one obeys them, then there might be reasonable grounds for
question or dispute. But in the present case the reverse is true: it is
the simple model that is built on the basic laws of physics, and it is
the arcane and philosophically difficult model, in which our basic human
intuition concerning the efficacy of mental effort is denied as not
being what it seems to be, that contradicts the laws of physics.

  The major theoretical issue we address in this article is the
failure of classical models of neurobiological action to provide a
scientifically adequate account for all of the mechanisms that are
operating when human beings utilize self-directed strategies for the
purpose of modulating emotional responses and their cerebral correlates.
Specifically, the assumption that all aspects of mental activity and
emotional life are ultimately explicable solely in terms of micro-local
deterministic brain activity, with no superposed effects of mental
effort, produces a theoretical structure that both fails to meet
practical scientific needs, and also fails to accord with the causal
structure of modern physics.

In the alternative approach the role played by the mind, when one is
observing and modulating one\'s own emotional states, is an
intrinsically active and physically efficacious process in which mental
action is affecting brain activity in a way concordant with the laws of
physics. A culturally relevant way of framing this change is to say that
contemporary physics imbues the venerable and therapeutically useful
term \"psychodynamic\" with rigorous neurophysical efficacy.

This new theory of the mind-brain connection is supportive of clinical
practice. Belief in the efficacy of mental effort in emotional
self-regulation is needed to subjectively access the phenomena (e.g.,
belief in the efficacy of effort is required to sustain mindfulness
during stressful events). Moreover, a conceptual framework in which
psychologically described efforts have effects is needed explain to
patients what they are supposed to do when directing their inner
resources to the challenging task of modifying emotional and cerebral
responses. Clinical success is jeopardized by a belief on the part of
either therapists or patients that their mental effort is an illusion or
a misconception.

It takes effort for people to achieve therapeutic results. That is
because it requires a redirection of the brain\'s resources away from
lower level limbic responses and toward higher level prefrontal
functions \-\-- and this does not happen passively. Rather, it requires,
in actual practice, both willful training and directed mental effort. 
It is semantically inconsistent and clinically counter productive to
insist that these kinds of brain changes be viewed as being solely an
intra-cerebral \"the physical brain changing itself\" type of action.
That is because practical aspects of the activity of mind essential to
the identification, activation, application and use of directed mental
effort are not describable solely in terms of material brain
mechanisms.  The core phenomena necessary for the scientific description
of self-directed neuroplasticity are processes that cannot be elaborated
solely in terms of classical models of physics.

Furthermore, as we will see in detail in the following sections of this
article, orthodox concepts of contemporary physics are ideally suited to
a rational and practically useful understanding of the action of mindful
self-observation on brain function.  Classical models of physics, which
view all action in the physical world as being ultimately the result of
the movements of material particles, are now seriously out of date, and
no longer need be seen as providing the unique, or the best,
scientifically well grounded paradigm for investigating the interface
between mind/consciousness and brain.

When people practice self-directed activities for the purpose
of systematically altering patterns of cerebral activation they
are attending to their mental and emotional *experiences*, not merely
their limbic or hypothalamic brain mechanisms. And while no
scientifically oriented person denies that those brain mechanisms play a
critical role in generating those experiences, precisely what the person
is training himself/herself to do is to willfully *change* how those
brain mechanisms operate \-\-- and to do that requires attending to
mental experience *per se*.  It is in fact the basic thesis of
self-directed neuroplasticity research that the *way in which a person
directs his attention*, e.g., mindfully or unmindfully, will affect both
the experiential state of the person and the state of his/her brain. The
existence of this close connection between mental effort and brain
activity flows naturally out of the dynamical principles of contemporary
physics, but is, within the framework of classical physics, a difficult
problem that philosophers of mind have been intensively engaged with,
particularly for the past fifty years. The core question is whether the
solution to this problem lies in wholly in the eventual development of a
more sophisticated philosophy that is closely aligned with the classical
known-to-be-fundamentally-false conception nature, or whether the
profound twentieth century development in physics that assigns a subtle
but essential causal role to human consciousness can usefully inform our
understanding of the effects of human consciousness in
neuropsychological experiments that appear to exhibit the causally
efficacious presence of such effects.

To appreciate the major conceptual changes made in basic physical theory
during the twentieth century one must be know about certain key features
of the older theory.

3\. Classical physics

Classical physics is a theory of nature that originated with the work of
Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century and was advanced by the
contributions of James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein. Newton based
his theory on the work of Johannes Kepler, who found that the planets
appeared to move in accordance with a simple mathematical law, and in
ways wholly determined by their spatial relationships to other objects.
Those motions were apparently *independent of our human observations of
them*.

Newton effectively assumed that all physical objects were made of tiny
miniaturized versions of the planets, which, like the planets, moved in
accordance with simple mathematical laws, independently of whether we
observed them or not. He found that he could then explain the motions of
the planets, and also the motions of large terrestrial objects and
systems, such as cannon balls, falling apples, and the tides, by
assuming that every tiny planet-like particle in the solar system
attracted every other one with a force inversely proportional the square
of the distance between them.

This force was an *instantaneous action at a distance*: it acted
instantaneously, no matter how far the particles were apart. This
feature troubled Newton. He wrote to a friend "That one body should act
upon another through the vacuum, without the mediation of anything else,
by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to
another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man, who has
in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall
into it." (Newton 1687: 634) Although Newton's philosophical persuasion
on this point is clear, he nevertheless formulated his universal law of
gravity without specifying how it was mediated.

Albert Einstein, building on the ideas of Maxwell, discovered a suitable
mediating agent, a distortion of the structure of space-time itself.
Einstein's contributions made classical physics into what is called a
*local theory*: there is no action at a distance. All influences are
transmitted essentially by contact interactions between tiny neighboring
mathematically described "entities," and no influence propagates faster
than the speed of light.

Classical physics is, moreover, *deterministic*: the interactions are
such that the state of the physical world at any time is completely
determined by the state at any earlier time. Consequently, according to
classical theory, the complete history of the physical world *for all
time* is mechanically fixed by contact interactions between tiny
component parts, together with the initial condition of the primordial
universe.

This result means that, according to classical physics, *you are a
mechanical automaton*: your every physical action was pre-determined
before you were born solely by mechanical interactions between tiny
mindless entities. Your mental aspects are *causally redundant*:
everything you do is completely determined by mechanical conditions
alone, without any mention of your thoughts, ideas, feelings, or
intentions. Your intuitive feeling that your conscious intentions make a
difference in what you do is, according to the principles of classical
physics, a false and misleading illusion.

There are two possible ways within classical physics to understand this
total incapacity of your mental side (i.e., your stream of consciousness
thoughts and feelings) to make any difference in what you do. The first
way is to consider your thoughts, ideas, and feelings to be
epiphenomenal by-products of the activity of your brain. Your mental
side is then a causally impotent sideshow that *is* *produced*, or
*caused*, by your brain, but that *produces* no reciprocal action back
upon your brain. The second way is to contend that each of your
conscious experiences \-\-- each of your thoughts, ideas, or feelings
\-\-- is the *very same thing* as some pattern of motion of various tiny
parts of your brain.

4\. Problems with classical physics

William James (1890: 138) argued against the first possibility,
epiphenomenal consciousness, by claiming that "*The particulars of the
distribution of consciousness*, so far as we know them, *points to its
being efficacious.*" He noted that consciousness seems to be "an organ,
superadded to the other organs which maintain the animal in its struggle
for existence; and the presumption of course is that it helps him in
some way in this struggle, just as they do. But it cannot help him
without being in some way efficacious and influencing the course of his
bodily history." James said that the study described in his book "will
show us that consciousness is at all times primarily a *selecting
agency*." It is present when choices must be made between different
possible courses of action. He further mentioned that "It is to my mind
quite inconceivable that consciousness should have *nothing to do* with
a business to which it so faithfully attends."(1890: 136)

If mental processes and consciousness have no effect upon the physical
world, then what keeps a person's mental world aligned with his physical
situation? What keeps his pleasures in general alignment with actions
that benefit him, and pains in general correspondence with things that
damage him, if felt pleasures and pains have no effect at all upon his
actions?

These liabilities of the notion of epiphenomenal mind and consciousness
lead many thinkers to turn to the alternative possibility that a
person's mind and stream of consciousness is *the very same thing* as
some activity in his brain: mind and consciousness are "emergent
properties" of brains.

A huge philosophical literature has developed arguing for and against
this idea. The primary argument against this "emergent-identity theory"
position, *within a classical physics framework*, is that in classical
physics the full description of nature is in terms of numbers assigned
to tiny space-time regions, and there appears to be no way to understand
or explain how to get from such a restricted conceptual structure, which
involves such a small part of the world of experience, to the whole. How
and why should that extremely limited conceptual structure, which arose
basically from idealizing, by miniaturization, certain features of
observed planetary motions, suffice to explain the totality of
experience, with its pains, sorrows, hopes, colors, smells, and moral
judgments? Why, *given the known failure of classical physics at the
fundamental level*, should that richly endowed whole be explainable in
terms of such a narrowly restricted part?

The core ideas of the arguments in favor of an identity-emergent theory
of mind and consciousness are illustrated by Roger Sperry's example of a
"wheel." (Sperry 1992) A wheel obviously does something: it is causally
efficacious; it carries the cart. It is also an *emergent property*:
there is no mention of "wheelness" in the formulation of the laws of
physics, and "wheelness" did not exist in the early universe;
"wheelness" *emerges* only under certain special conditions. And the
macroscopic wheel exercises "top-down" control of its tiny parts. All
these properties are perfectly in line with classical physics, and with
the idea that "a wheel is, precisely, a structure constructed out of its
tiny atomic parts." So why not suppose mind and consciousness to be,
like "wheelness", emergent properties of their classically conceived
tiny physical parts?

The reason that mind and consciousness are not analogous to "wheelness",
within the context of classical physics, is that the properties that
characterize "wheelness" are properties that are *entailed,* within the
conceptual framework of classical physics, by properties specified in
classical physics, whereas the properties that characterize conscious
mental processes, namely the various ways these processes feel, are not
*entailed,* within the conceptual structure provided by classical
physics, by the properties specified by classical physics.

That is the huge difference-in-principle that distinguishes mind and
consciousness from things that, according to classical physics, are
constructible out of the particles that are postulated to exist by
classical physics.

Given the state of motion of each of the tiny physical parts of a wheel,
as it is conceived of in classical physics, the properties that
characterize the wheel - e.g., its roundness, radius, center point, rate
of rotation, etc., - are specified within the conceptual framework
provided by the principles of classical physics, which specify only
geometric-type properties such as changing locations and shapes of
conglomerations of particles, and numbers assigned to points in space.
But given the state of motion of each tiny part of the brain, as it is
conceived of in classical physics, the properties that characterize the
stream of consciousness - the painfulness of the pain, the feeling of
the anguish, or of the sorrow, or of the joy - are not specified, within
the conceptual framework provided by the principles of classical
physics. Thus it is possible, within that classical physics framework,
to strip away those feelings without disturbing the physical
descriptions of the motions of the tiny parts. One can, within the
conceptual framework of classical physics, take away the consciousness
while leaving intact the properties that enter into that theoretical
construct, namely the locations and motions of the tiny physical parts
of the brain and its physical environment. But one cannot, within the
conceptual framework provided by classical physics, take away the
physical characteristics that define the "wheelness" of a wheel without
affecting the locations and motions of the tiny physical parts of the
wheel.

Because one can, within the conceptual framework provided by classical
physics, strip away mind and consciousness without affecting the
physical behavior, one cannot rationally claim, *within that framework*,
that mind and consciousness are the *causes* of the physical behavior,
or are *causally efficacious* in the physical world. Thus the "identity
theory" or "emergent property" strategy fails in its attempt to make
mind and consciousness efficacious, insofar as one remains strictly
within the conceptual framework provided by classical physics. Moreover,
the whole endeavor to base brain theory on classical physics is
undermined by the fact that classical theory is unable to account for
behavioral properties (such as electrical and thermal conductivity, and
elasticity, etc.) that depend sensitively upon the behavior of the
atomic, molecular, and ionic constituents of a system, and brains are
certainly systems of this kind, as will be discussed in detail later.

Although classical physics is unable to account for observable
properties that depend sensitively on the behaviors of atoms, molecules,
and ions, the classical theory is an approximation to a more accurate
theory, called quantum theory, that *is* able to account for these
observable macroscopic properties. But if classical physics is unable to
account for the moderately complex behavioral properties of most other
large systems then how can it be expected to account for the exquisitely
complex behavioral properties of thinking brains.

5\. The quantum approach

Early in the twentieth century scientists discovered empirically that
the principles of classical physics could not be correct. Moreover,
those principles were wrong in ways that no minor tinkering could ever
fix. The *basic principles* of classical physics were thus replaced by
*new basic principles* that account uniformly both for all the successes
of the older classical theory and also for all the data that is
incompatible with the classical principles.

The key philosophical and scientific achievement of the founders of
quantum theory was to forge a rationally coherent and practically useful
linkage between the two kinds of descriptions that jointly comprise the
foundation of science. Descriptions of the first kind are accounts of
psychologically experienced empirical findings, expressed in a language
that allows us to communicate to our colleagues what we have done and
what we have learned. Descriptions of the second kind are specifications
of physical properties, which are expressed by assigning mathematical
properties to space-time points, and formulating laws that determine how
these properties evolve over the course of time. Bohr, Heisenberg,
Pauli, and the other inventors of quantum theory discovered a useful way
to connect these two kinds of descriptions by causal laws, and their
seminal discovery was extended by John von Neumann from the domain of
atomic science to the realm of neuroscience, and in particular to the
problem of understanding and describing the causal connections between
the minds and the brains of human beings.

In order to achieve this result, the whole *conception of what science
is* was turned inside out. The core idea of classical physics was to
describe the "world out there," with no reference to "our thoughts in
here." But the core idea of quantum mechanics is to describe both *our
activities as knowledge-seeking and knowledge-acquiring agents*, and
also *the knowledge that we thereby acquire*. Thus quantum theory
involves, basically, what is "in here," not just what is "out there."

This philosophical shift arises from the *explicit* recognition by
quantum physicists that science is about *what we can know*. It is fine
to have a beautiful and elegant mathematical theory about a *really*
*existing physical world out there* that meets various intellectually
satisfying criteria. But the essential demand of *science* is that the
theoretical constructs be tied to the experiences of the human
scientists who devise ways of testing the theory, and of the human
engineers and technicians who both participate in these tests, and
eventually put the theory to work. Thus the structure of a proper
physical theory must involve not only the part describing the behavior
of the not-directly-experienced theoretically postulated entities,
expressed in some appropriate symbolic language, but also a part
describing the human experiences that are pertinent to these tests and
applications, expressed in the language that we actually use to describe
such experiences to ourselves and to each other. And the theory must
specify the connection between these two differently described and
differently conceived parts of scientific practice.

Classical physics meets this final requirement in a trivial kind of way.
The relevant experiences of the human participants are taken to be
direct apprehensions of the gross properties of large objects composed
of huge numbers of their tiny atomic-scale parts. These apprehensions
\-\-- of, for example, the perceived location and motion of a falling
apple, or the position of a pointer on a measuring device \-\-- were
taken to be *passive*: they had no effect on the behaviors of the
systems being studied. But the physicists who were examining the
behaviors of systems that depend sensitively upon the behaviors of their
tiny atomic-scale components found themselves forced to introduce a less
trivial theoretical arrangement. In the new scheme the human agents are
no longer passive observers. They are considered to be *active agents,
or participants.*

The participation of the agent continues to be important *even when the
only features of the physically described world being observed are
large-scale properties of measuring devices.* The sensitivity of the
behavior of the devices to the behavior of some tiny atomic-scale
particles propagates first to the devices and then to the observers in
such a way that the choice made by an observer about what sort of
knowledge to seek can profoundly affect the knowledge that can ever be
received either by that observer himself or by any other observer with
whom he can communicate. Thus the *choice* made by the observer about
how he or she will act at a macroscopic level has, at the practical
level, a profound effect on the physical system being acting upon.

That conclusion is not surprising. How one acts on a system would, in
general, be *expected* to affect it. Nor is it shocking that the effect
of the agent's actions upon the system being probed is specified by the
quantum mechanical rules. But the essential point not to be overlooked
is that the logical structure of the basic physical theory has become
fundamentally transformed. The agent's choice about how to act has been
introduced into the scientific description at a basic level, and in a
way that specifies, mathematically, how his or her choice about how to
act affects the physical system being acted upon

The structure of quantum mechanics is such that, although the effect
upon the observed system of the agent's choice about how to act is
mathematically specified, the manner in which this choice itself is
determined is not specified. This means that, in the treatment of
experimental data, the choices made by human agents must be treated as
freely chosen input variables, rather than as mechanical consequences of
any known laws of nature. Quantum theory thereby converts science's
conception of us from that of a mechanical automaton, whose conscious
choices are mere cogs in a gigantic mechanical machine, to that of
agents whose conscious free choices affect the physically described
world in a way specified by the theory. The approximation that reduces
quantum theory to classical physics completely eliminates the important
element of conscious free choice. Hence, from a physics point of view,
trying to understand the connection between mind/consciousness and brain
by going to the classical approximation is absurd: it amounts to trying
to understand something in an approximation that eliminates the effect
we are trying to study.

This original formulation of quantum theory was created mainly at an
Institute in Copenhagen directed by Niels Bohr, and is called "The
Copenhagen Interpretation." Due to the strangeness of the properties of
nature entailed by the new mathematics, the Copenhagen strategy was to
refrain from making any ordinary sort of ontological claims, but to
take, instead, an essentially pragmatic stance. Thus the theory was
formulated *basically* as a set of practical rules for how scientists
should go about the tasks of acquiring, manipulating, and using
knowledge. Claims about "what the world out there is really like" were
considered to lie beyond *science.*

This change in perspective is captured by Heisenberg's famous statement:

> "The conception of the objective reality of the elementary particles
> has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality
> concept, but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that
> represents no longer the behavior of the particle but rather our
> knowledge of this behavior." (Heisenberg, 1958a)

A closely connected change is encapsulated in Niels Bohr dictum that "in
the great drama of existence we ourselves are both actors and
spectators." (Bohr 1963: 15 and 1958: 81) The emphasis here is on
"actors": in classical physics we were mere spectators. The key idea is
more concretely expressed in statements such as:

> \"\[T\]he freedom of experimentation, presupposed in classical
> physics, is of course retained and corresponds to the free choice of
> experimental arrangement for which the mathematical structure of the
> quantum mechanical formalism offers the appropriate latitude.\" (Bohr,
> 1958, p. 73}

Copenhagen quantum theory is about how the choices made by conscious
human agents affect the knowledge they can and do acquire about the
physically described systems upon which these agents act. In order to
achieve this re-conceptualization of physics the Copenhagen formulation
separates the physical universe into two parts, which are described in
two different languages. One part is the observing human agent plus his
measuring devices. This extended "agent," which includes the devices, is
described in mental terms - in terms of our instructions to colleagues
about how to set up the devices, and our reports of what we then "see,"
or otherwise consciously experience. The other part of nature is *the*
*system that the agent is acting upon*. That part is described in
physical terms - in terms of mathematical properties assigned to tiny
space-time regions. Thus Copenhagen quantum theory brings "doing
science" into science. In particular, it brings a crucial part of doing
science, namely our choices about how we will probe nature, directly
into the causal structure. It specifies the effects of these probing
actions upon the systems being probed.

This approach works very well in practice. However, the body and brain
of the human agent, and also his devices, are composed of atomic
constituents. Hence a complete theory ought to be able to describe these
systems in physical terms.

The great mathematician and logician John von Neumann formulated quantum
theory in a rigorous way that allows the bodies and brains of the
agents, along with their measuring devices, to be shifted into the
physically described world. This shift is carried out in a series of
steps each of which moves more of what the Copenhagen approach took to
be the psychologically described "observing system" into the physically
described "observed system." *At each step the crucial act of choosing
or deciding between possible optional observing actions remains
undetermined by the physical observed system*. This act of choosing is
always ascribed to the observing agent. In the end all that is left of
this agent is what von Neumann calls his "abstract ego." It is described
in psychological terms, and is, in practice, the stream of consciousness
of the agent.

At each step the direct effect of the conscious act is upon the part of
the physically described world that is closest to the psychologically
described world. This means that, in the end, the causal effect of the
agent's mental action is on his own brain, or some significant part of
his brain.

Von Neumann makes the logical structure of quantum theory very clear by
identifying two very different processes, which he calls Process 1 and
Process 2 (von Neumann 1955: 418). Process 2 is the analog in quantum
theory of the process in classical physics that takes the state of a
system at one time to its state at a later time. This Process 2, like
its classical analog, is *local* and *deterministic*. However, Process 2
by itself is not the whole story: it generates a host of "physical
worlds" most of which do not agree with our human experience. For
example, if Process 2 were, from the time of the Big Bang, the *only*
process in nature, then the quantum state of the (center point of the)
moon would represent a structure smeared out over large part of the sky,
and each human body-brain would likewise be represented by a structure
smeared out continuously over a huge region. Process 2 generates a
*cloud of possible worlds*, instead of the one world we actually
experience.

This huge disparity between properties generated by the "mechanical"
Process 2 and the properties we actually observe is resolved by invoking
Process 1.

Any physical theory must, in order to be complete, specify how the
elements of the theory are connected to human experience. In classical
physics this connection is part of a *metaphysical* superstructure: it
is not part of the dynamical process. But in quantum theory a linkage of
the mathematically described physical state to human experiences is
contained in the mathematically specified dynamics*.* This connection is
not passive. It is not a mere *witnessing* of a physical feature of
nature. Instead, *it injects into the physical state of the system being
acted upon specific properties that depend upon choices made by the
agent.*

Quantum theory is built upon the practical concept of intentional
actions by agents. Each such action is a *preparation* that is expected
or intended to produce an experiential response or feedback. For
example, a scientist might act to place a Geiger counter near a
radioactive source, and expect to see the counter either "fire" during a
certain time interval or not "fire" during that interval. The
experienced response, "Yes" or "No", to the question "Does the counter
fire during the specified interval?" specifies one bit of information.
Quantum theory is thus an information-based theory built upon the
preparative actions of information-seeking agents.

Probing actions of this kind are performed not only by scientists. Every
healthy and alert infant is continually engaged in making willful
efforts that produce experiential feedbacks, and he/she soon begins to
form expectations about what sorts of feedbacks are likely to follow
from some particular kind of effort. Thus both empirical science and
normal human life are based on paired realities of this action-response
kind, and our physical and psychological theories are both basically
attempting to understand these linked realities within a rational
conceptual framework.

The basic building blocks of quantum theory are, then, a set of
intentional actions by agents, and for each such action an associated
collection of possible "Yes" feedbacks, which are the possible responses
that the agent can judge to be in conformity to the criteria associated
with that intentional act. For example, the agent is assumed to be able
to make the judgment "Yes" the Geiger counter clicked or "No" the Geiger
counter did not click. Science would be difficult to pursue if
scientists could make no such judgments about what they are
experiencing.

All known physical theories involve idealizations of one kind or
another. In quantum theory the main idealization is not that every
object is made up of miniature planet-like objects. It is rather that
there are agents that perform intentional acts each of which can result
in a feedback that may or may not conform to a certain criterion
associated with that act. One bit of information is introduced into the
world in which that agent lives, according to whether or not the
feedback conforms to that criterion. The answer places the agent on one
or the other of two alternative possible branches of the course of world
history.

These remarks reveal the enormous difference between classical physics
and quantum physics. In classical physics the elemental ingredients are
tiny invisible bits of matter that are idealized miniaturized versions
of the planets that we see in the heavens, and that move in ways
unaffected by our scrutiny, whereas in quantum physics the elemental
ingredients are intentional preparative actions by agents, the feedbacks
arising from these actions, and the effects of these actions upon the
physically described states of the probed systems.

This radical re-structuring of the form of physical theory grew out of a
seminal discovery by Heisenberg. That discovery was that in order to get
a satisfactory quantum generalization of a classical theory one must
replace various *numbers* in the classical theory by *actions*
(operators). A key difference between numbers and actions is that if A
and B are two actions then AB represents the action obtained by
performing the action A upon the action B. If A and B are two different
actions then generally AB is different from BA: the order in which
actions are performed matters. But for numbers the order does not
matter: AB = BA.

The difference between quantum physics and its classical approximation
resides in the fact that in the quantum case certain differences AB-BA
are proportional to a number measured by Max Planck in 1900, and called
Planck's constant. Setting those differences to zero gives the classical
approximation. Thus quantum theory is closely connected to classical
physics, but is incompatible with it, because certain *nonzero*
quantities must be replaced by zero to obtain the classical
approximation.

The intentional actions of agents are represented mathematically in
Heisenberg's space of actions. Here is how it works.

Each intentional action depends, of course, on the *intention of the
agent*, and upon the *state of the system* upon which this action acts.
Each of these *two aspects of nature* is represented within Heisenberg's
space of actions by an *action*. The idea that a "state" should be
represented by an "action" may sound odd, but Heisenberg's key idea was
to replace what classical physics took to be a "being" by a "doing." I
shall denote the *action* (or operator) that represents the state being
acted upon by the symbol S.

An intentional act is an action that is intended to produce a feedback
of a certain conceived or imagined kind. Of course, no intentional act
is sure-fire: one's intentions may not be fulfilled. Hence the
intentional action merely puts into play a process that will lead either
to a confirmatory feedback "Yes," the intention is realized, or to the
result "No", the "Yes" response did not occur.

The effect of this intentional mental act is represented mathematically
by an equation that is one of the key components of quantum theory. This
equation represents, within the quantum mathematics, the effect of the
Process 1 action upon the quantum state S of the system being acted
upon. The equation is:

SàS' = PSP + (I-P)S(I-P).

This formula exhibits the important fact that this Process 1 action
changes the state S of the system being acted upon into a new state S',
which is a sum of two parts.

The first part, PSP, represents, in physical terms, the possibility in
which the experiential feedback called "Yes" appears, and the second
part, (I-P)S(I-P), represents the alternative possibility "No", this
"Yes" feedback does not appear. Thus an effect of the probing action is
injected into the mathematical description of the physical system being
acted upon.

The operator P is important. The action represented by P, acting both on
the right and on the left of S, is the action of eliminating from the
state S all parts of S except the "Yes" part. That particular retained
part is determined by the choice made by the agent. The symbol I is the
unit operator, which is essentially multiplication by the number 1, and
the action of (I-P), acting both on the right and on the left of S, is,
analogously, to eliminate from S all parts of S except the "No" parts.

Notice that Process 1 produces the *sum* of the two alternative possible
feedbacks, not just one or the other. Since the feedback must either be
"Yes" or "No = Not-Yes," one might think that Process 1, which keeps
both the "Yes" and the "No" possibilities, would do nothing. But that is
not correct. This is a key point! It can be made absolutely clear by
noticing that S can be written as a sum of four parts, only two of which
survive the Process 1 action:

S = PSP + (I-P) S(I-P) + PS(I-P) + (I-P)SP.

This formula is a strict identity. The dedicated reader can quickly
verify it by collecting the contributions of the four occurring terms
PSP, PS, SP, and S, and verifying that all terms but S cancel out. This
identity shows that the state S is a sum of four parts, *two of which
are eliminated by Process 1.*

But this means that Process 1 has a *nontrivial effect* upon the state
being acted upon: it eliminates the two terms that correspond neither to
the appearance of a "Yes" feedback nor to the failure of the "Yes"
feedback to appear.

This result is the *first key point*: quantum theory has a specific
causal process, Process 1, which produces a nontrivial effect of an
*agent's choice* upon the physical description of the system being
examined. \["Nature" will eventually choose between "Yes" and "No", but
we focus here on the prior Process 1, *the agent's choice*. Nature's
subsequent choice we shall call Process 3.\]

5.1. Free choices

The second key point is this: the agent's choices are "free choices,"
*in the specific sense specified below.*

Orthodox quantum theory is formulated in a realistic and practical way.
It is structured around the activities of human agents, who are
considered able to freely elect to probe nature in any one of many
possible ways. Bohr emphasized the freedom of the experimenters in
passages such as the one already quoted above, or the similar

"The foundation of the description of the experimental conditions as
well as our freedom to choose them is fully retained." (Bohr, 1958,
p.90)

This freedom of choice stems from the fact that in the original
Copenhagen formulation of quantum theory the human experimenter is
considered to stand outside the system to which the quantum laws are
applied. Those quantum laws are the only precise laws of nature
recognized by that theory. Thus, according to the Copenhagen philosophy,
*there are no presently known laws that govern the choices* made by the
agent/experimenter/observer about how the observed system is to be
probed. This choice is thus*, in this very specific sense*, a "free
choice." The von Neumann generalization leaves this freedom intact. The
choices attributed to von Neumann's "abstract ego" are no more limited
by the known rules of quantum theory than are the choices made by Bohr's
experimenter.

5.2. Nerve terminals, ion channels, and the need to use quantum theory
in the study of the mind-brain connection

Neuroscientists studying the connection of mind and consciousness to
physical processes in the brain often assume that a conception of nature
based on classical physics will eventually turn out to be adequate. That
assumption would have been reasonable during the nineteenth century. But
now, in the twenty-first century, it is rationally untenable. Quantum
theory must be used in principle because the behavior of the brain
depends sensitively upon atomic, molecular and ionic processes, and
these processes in the brain often involve large quantum effects.

To study quantum effects in brains within an orthodox (i.e., Copenhagen
or von Neumann) quantum theory one must use the von Neumann formulation.
This is because *Copenhagen* quantum theory is formulated in a way that
leaves out the quantum dynamics of the human observer's body and brain.
But von Neumann quantum theory takes the physical system S upon which
the crucial Process 1 acts to be precisely the brain of the agent, or
some part of it. Thus Process 1 describes here an interaction between a
person's stream of consciousness, described in mentalistic terms, and an
activity in his brain, described in physical terms.

A key question is the *quantitative magnitude* of quantum effects in the
brain. They must be large in order for deviations from classical physics
to play any significant role. To examine this quantitative question we
consider the quantum dynamics of nerve terminals.

Nerve terminals are essential connecting links between nerve cells. The
general way they work is reasonably well understood. When an action
potential traveling along a nerve fiber reaches a nerve terminal, a host
of ion channels open. Calcium ions enter through these channels into the
interior of the terminal. These ions migrate from the channel exits to
release sites on vesicles containing neurotransmitter molecules. A
triggering effect of the calcium ions causes these contents to be dumped
into the synaptic cleft that separates this terminal from a neighboring
neuron, and these neurotransmitter molecules influence the tendencies of
that neighboring neuron to "fire."

At their narrowest points calcium ion channels are less than a nanometer
in diameter (Cataldi et al. 2002). This extreme smallness of the opening
in the calcium ion channels has profound quantum mechanical
implications. The narrowness of the channel restricts the lateral
*spatial* dimension. Consequently, the lateral *velocity* is forced by
the *quantum uncertainty principle* to become large. This causes the
*quantum cloud of possibilities* associated with the calcium ion to *fan
out* over an increasing area as it moves away from the tiny channel to
the target region where the ion will be absorbed as a whole, or not
absorbed at all, on some small triggering site.

This spreading of this *ion wave packet* means that the ion may or may
not be absorbed on the small triggering site. Accordingly, the contents
of the vesicle may or may not be released. Consequently, the quantum
state of the brain has a part in which the neurotransmitter is released
and a part in which the neurotransmitter is not released. This quantum
splitting occurs at every one of the trillions of nerve terminals. This
means that quantum state of the brain splits into vast host of
classically conceived possibilities, one for each possible combination
of the release-or-no-release options at each of the nerve terminals.
Actually, because of uncertainties on timings and locations, what is
generated by the physical processes in the brain will be not a single
discrete set of non-overlapping physical possibilities but rather a huge
*smear* of classically conceived possibilities. Once the physical state
of the brain has evolved into this huge smear of possibilities one must
appeal to the quantum rules, and in particular to the effects of Process
1, in order to connect the physically described world to the steams of
consciousness of the observer/participants.

This focus on the motions of calcium ions in nerve terminals is not
meant to suggest that this particular effect is the *only* place where
quantum effects enter into brain process, or that the quantum Process 1
acts locally at these sites. What is needed here is only the existence
of *some* large quantum of effect. The focusing upon these calcium ions
stems from the facts that (1) in this case the various sizes
(dimensions) needed to estimate the *magnitude* of the quantum effects
are empirically known, and (2) that the release of neurotransmitter into
synaptic clefts is known to play a significant role in brain dynamics.

The brain is warm and wet, and is continually interacting strongly with
its environment. It might be thought that the strong *quantum
decoherence effects* associated with these conditions would wash out all
quantum effects, beyond localized chemical processes that can be
conceived to be imbedded in an essentially classical world.

Strong decoherence effects are certainly present, but they are
automatically taken into account in the von Neumann formulation employed
here. These effects merely convert the state S of the brain into what is
called a \"statistical mixture\" of \"nearly classically describable\"
states, each of which develops in time, in the absence of Process 1
events, in an almost classically describable way.

*The existence of strong decoherence effects makes the main consequences
of quantum theory being discussed here more easily accessible to
neuroscientists by effectively reducing the complex quantum state of the
brain to a collection of almost classically describable possibilities.*
Because of the uncertainties introduced at the ionic, atomic, molecular,
and electronic levels, the brain state will develop not into one single
classically describable macroscopic state, as it does in classical
physics, but into a continuous distribution of parallel virtual states
of this kind. Process 1 must then be invoked to allow definite empirical
predictions to be extracted from this continuous smear of parallel
overlapping almost-classical possibilities generated by Process 2.

5.3 Quantum brain dynamics

A principal function of the brain is to receive clues from the
environment, to form an appropriate plan of action, and to direct and
monitor the activities of the brain and body specified by the selected
plan of action. The exact details of the plan will, for a classical
model, obviously depend upon the exact values of many noisy and
uncontrolled variables. In cases close to a bifurcation point the
dynamical effects of noise might even tip the balance between two very
different responses to the given clues, e.g., tip the balance between
the 'fight' or 'flight' response to some shadowy form. It is important
to realize that the exact values accounting for what in classical
physics models are called \"dynamical effects of noise\" are unknowable
in principle. The contemporary physical model accounts for these
uncertainties in brain dynamics.

The effect of the independent "release" or "don't release" options at
each of the trigger sites, coupled with the uncertainty in the timing of
the vesicle release at each of the trillions of nerve terminals will be
to cause the quantum mechanical state of the brain to become a smeared
out cloud of different macroscopic possibilities, some representing
different alternative possible plans of action. As long as the brain
dynamics is controlled wholly by Process 2 - which is the quantum
generalization of the Newtonian laws of motion of classical physics -
all of the various alternative possible plans of action will exist in
parallel, with no one plan of action singled out as the one that will
actually be experienced.

Some process beyond the local deterministic Process 2 is required to
pick out one experienced course of physical events from the smeared out
mass of possibilities generated by all of the alternative possible
combinations of vesicle releases at all of the trillions of nerve
terminals. As already emphasized, this other process is Process 1. This
process brings in a *choice* that is not determined by any currently
known law of nature, yet has a definite effect upon the brain of the
chooser. The Process 1 choice picks an operator P, and also a time t at
which P acts. The effect of this action at time t is to change the state
S(t) of the brain, or of some large part of the brain, to

PS(t)P + (I-P) S(t) (I-P).

The action P cannot act at a *point* in the brain, because action at a
point would dump a huge (in principle infinite) amount of energy into
the brain, which would then explode. The operator P *must* therefore act
non-locally, over a potentially large part of the brain.

In examining the question of the nature of the effect in the brain of
Process 2 we focused on the separate motions of the individual
particles. But the physical structures in terms of which the action of
Process 1 is naturally expressed are not the separate motions of
individual particles. They are, rather, the *quasi-stable* *macroscopic
degrees of freedom*. The brain structures selected by the action of P
must enjoy the stability, endurance, and causal linkages needed to bring
the intended experiential feedbacks into being.

These functional structures are likely to be more like the lowest-energy
state of the simple harmonic oscillator, which is completely stable, or
like the states obtained from such lowest-energy states by spatial
displacements and shifts in velocity. These shifted states tend to
*endure as oscillating states*. In other words, in order to create the
needed causal structure the projection operator P corresponding to an
intentional action ought to pick out functionally pertinent quasi-stable
*oscillating states of macroscopic subsystems of the brain*. The state
associated with a Process 1 preparatory intervention should be a
functionally important brain analog of a collection of oscillating modes
of a drumhead, in which large assemblies of particles are moving in a
coordinated way. Such an enduring structure in the brain can serve as a
trigger and coordinator of further coordinated activities.

5.4 Templates for action

The brain process that is actualized by the transition S(t)PS(t)P is
the neural correlate of the psychologically intended action. It is the
brain's template for the intended action. It is a pattern of
neuroelectrical activity that if held in place long enough will tend to
generate a physical action in the brain that will tend to produce the
intended experiential feedback.

5.5. Origin of the choices of the Process 1 actions

It has been repeatedly emphasized here that the choices of which Process
I actions actually occur are "free choices," in the sense that they are
not specified by the currently known laws of physics. On the other hand,
a person's intentions are surely related in some way to his historical
past. This means that the laws of contemporary orthodox quantum theory,
although restrictive and important, are not the whole story. In spite of
this, orthodox quantum theory, while making no claim to ontological
completeness, is able to achieve a certain kind of *pragmatic
completeness.* It does so by treating the Process 1 "free choices" as
the input variables of experimental protocols, rather than mechanically
determined consequences of brain action.

In quantum physics *the "free choices" made by human subjects are
regarded as subjectively controllable input variable.* Bohr emphasized
that "the mathematical structure of the quantum mechanical formalism
offers the appropriate latitude" for these free choices. But the need
for this strategic move goes deeper than the mere fact that contemporary
quantum theory fails to specify how these choices are made. For if in
the von Neumann formulation one does seek to determine the cause of the
"free choice" within the representation of the physical brain of the
chooser one finds that one is *systematically* blocked from determining
the cause of the choice by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which
asserts that the locations and velocities of, say, the calcium ions, are
simultaneous unknowable to the precision needed to determine what the
choice will be. Thus one is faced not merely with a practical
unknowability of the causal origin of the "free choices," but with an
*unknowability in principle* that stems from the uncertainty principle
itself, which lies at the base of quantum mechanics. There is thus a
deep root in quantum theory for the idea that the origin of the "free
choices" lies not in the physical description alone, and for the
consequent policy of treating these "free choices" as empirical inputs
that are selected by agents, and enter into the causal structure via
Process 1.

5.6 Effort

It is useful to classify Process 1 events as either "active" or
"passive." *Passive* Process 1 events are attentional events that occur
with little or no feeling of conscious effort. A*ctive* Process 1 events
are intentional and involve effort. This distinction is given a
functional significance by allowing "effort" to enter into the selection
of Process 1 events in a way that will now be specified.

Consciousness probably contributes very little to brain dynamics,
compared to the contribution of the brain itself. To minimize the input
of consciousness, and in order to achieve testability, we propose to
allow mental effort to do nothing but control "Attention Density", which
is the rapidity of the Process 1 events. This allows effort to have only
a very limited kind of influence on brain activities, which are largely
controlled by physical properties of the brain itself.

The notion that only the Attention Density is controlled by conscious
effort arose from an investigation into what sort of conscious control
over Process 1 action was sufficient to accommodate the most blatant
empirical facts. Imposing this strong restriction on the allowed effects
of consciousness produces a theory with correspondingly strong
predictive power. In this model all significant effects of consciousness
upon brain activity arise exclusively from a well known and well
verified strictly quantum effect known as the Quantum Zeno Effect.

5.7. The Quantum Zeno Effect

If one considers only passive events, then it is very difficult to
identify any empirical effect of Process 1, apart from the occurrence of
awareness. In the first place, the empirical averaging over the "Yes"
and "No" possibilities in strict accordance with the quantum laws tends
to wash out all effects that depart from what would arise from a
classical statistical analysis that incorporates the uncertainty
principle as simply lack of knowledge. Moreover, the passivity of the
mental process means that we have no empirically controllable variable.

But the study of effortfully controlled intentional action brings in two
empirically accessible variables, the intention and the amount of
effort. It also brings in the important physical Quantum Zeno Effect.
This effect is named for the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea, and was
brought into prominence in 1977 by the physicists Sudarshan and Misra
(1977). It gives a name to the fact that repeated and closely-spaced
observational acts can effectively hold the "Yes" feedback in place for
an extended time interval that depends upon the *rapidity at which the
Process 1 actions are happening*. According to our model, this rapidity
is controlled by the amount of effort being applied. In our notation the
effect is to keep the "Yes" condition associated with states of the form
PSP in place longer than would be the case if no effort were being made.
This "holding" effect can override very strong mechanical forces arising
from Process 2. It's a case of mind over brain matter!

The "Yes" states PSP are assumed to be conditioned by training and
learning to contain the template for action which if held in place for
an extended period will tend to produce the intended experiential
feedback. Thus the model allows intentional mental efforts to tend to
bring intended experiences into being. Systems that have the capacity to
exploit this feature of natural law, as it is represented in quantum
theory, would apparently enjoy a tremendous survival advantage over
systems that do not or cannot exploit it.

6\. Support from psychology

A person's experiential life is a stream of conscious experiences. The
person's experienced *"self"* is *part* of this stream of consciousness:
it is not an extra thing that lies outside what the person is conscious
of. In James's words (1890: 401) "*thought is itself the thinker*, and
psychology need not look beyond." The experiential "self" is a slowly
changing "fringe" part of the stream of consciousness. This part of the
stream of consciousness provides an overall background cause for the
central focus of attention.

The physical brain, evolving mechanically in accordance with the local
deterministic Process 2 can do most of the necessary work of the brain.
It can do the job of creating, on the basis of its interpretation of the
clues provided by the senses, a suitable response, which will be
controlled by a certain pattern of neural or brain activity that acts as
a *template for action*. But, due to its quantum character, the brain
necessarily generates an amorphous mass of overlapping and conflicting
templates for action. Process 1 acts to extract from this jumbled mass
of possibilities some particular template for action. This template is a
feature of the "Yes" states PSP that specifies the form of the Process 1
event. But the quantum rules do not assert that this "Yes" part of the
prior state S *necessarily* comes into being. They assert, instead, that
if this Process 1 action is triggered\-\--say by some sort of
"consent"\-\--then this "Yes" component PSP will come into being with
probability Tr PSP/Tr S, and that the "No" state will occur if the "Yes"
state does not occur, where the symbol Tr represents a quantum
mechanical summation over all possibilities.

If the rate at which these "consents" occur is assumed to be
*increasable by conscious mental effort,* then the causal efficacy of
"will" can be understood. Conscious effort can, by activation of the
Quantum Zeno Effect, override strong mechanical forces arising from
Process 2, and *cause* the template for action to be held in place
longer than it would be if the rapid sequence of Process 1 events were
not occurring. This sustained existence of the template for action can
increase the probability that the intended action will occur.

Does this quantum-physics-based conception of the origin of the causal
efficacy of "Will" accord with the findings of psychology?

Consider some passages from \'\'Psychology: The Briefer Course\'\',
written by William James. In the final section of the chapter on
attention James(1892: 227) writes:

> "I have spoken as if our attention were wholly determined by neural
> conditions. I believe that the array of *things* we can attend to is
> so determined. No object can *catch* our attention except by
> the neural machinery. But the *amount* of the attention which an
> object receives after it has caught our attention is another question.
> It often takes effort to keep the mind upon it. We feel that we can
> make more or less of the effort as we choose. If this feeling be not
> deceptive, if our effort be a spiritual force, and an indeterminate
> one, then of course it contributes coequally with the cerebral
> conditions to the result. Though it *introduce* no new idea, it will
> deepen and prolong the stay in consciousness of innumerable ideas
> which else would fade more quickly away."

In the chapter on will, in the section entitled \'\'Volitional effort is
effort of attention\'\' James (1892: 417) writes:

> "Thus we find that we reach the heart of our inquiry into volition
> when we ask by what process is it that the thought of any given action
> comes to prevail stably in the mind."  

and, later

> "The essential achievement of the will, in short, when it is most
> \'voluntary,\' is to attend to a difficult object and hold it
> fast before the mind. \... Effort of attention is thus the essential
> phenomenon of will."

Still later, James says:

> "Consent to the idea\'s undivided presence, this is effort\'s sole
> achievement\... Everywhere, then, the function of effort is the same:
> to keep affirming and adopting the thought which, if left to itself,
> would slip away."

This description of the effect of will on the course of mental-cerebral
processes is remarkably in line with *what had been proposed
independently from purely theoretical considerations of the quantum
physics of this process*. The connections specified by James are
*explained* on the basis of the same dynamical principles that had been
introduced by physicists to explain atomic phenomena. Thus the whole
range of science, from atomic physics to mind-brain dynamics, has the
possibility of being brought together into a single rationally coherent
theory of an evolving cosmos that is constituted not of *matter* but of
*actions* by agents. In this conceptualization of nature, agents could
naturally evolve in accordance with the principles of natural selection,
due to the fact that their efforts have physical consequences. The
outline of a possible rationally coherent understanding of the
connection between mind and matter begins to emerge.

In the quantum theory of mind/consciousness-brain being described here
there are altogether three processes. First, there is the purely
mechanical process called Process 2. As discussed at length in the book,
*Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics* (Stapp 1993/2003: 150), this
process, as it applies to the brain, involves important dynamical units
that are represented by complex patterns of brain activity that are
"facilitated" (i.e., strengthened) by use, and are such that each unit
tends to be activated as a whole by the activation of several of its
parts. The activation of various of these complex patterns by cross
referencing\-\--i.e., by activation of several of its parts\-\--coupled
to feed-back loops that strengthen or weaken the activities of
appropriate processing centers, appears to account for the essential
features of the mechanical part of the dynamics in a way that is not
significantly different from what a classical model can support, except
for the existence of a host of parallel possibilities that according to
the classical concepts cannot exist simultaneously.

The second process, von Neumann\'s Process 1**,** is needed in order to
pick out from a chaotic continuum of overlapping parallel possibilities
some particular discrete possibility and its complement (The complement
can be further divided, but the essential action is present in the
choice of one particular "Yes" state PS(t)P from the morass of
possibilities in which it is imbedded). The third process is Nature's
choice between "Yes" and "No." Nature's choice conforms to a statistical
rule, but the agent's choice is, within contemporary quantum theory, a
"free choice" that can be and is consistently treated as an input
variable of the empirical protocol.

Process 1 has itself two modes. The first is passive, and can produce
temporally isolated events. The second is active, and involves mental
effort.

Active Process 1 intervention has, according to the quantum model
described here, a distinctive form. It consists of a sequence of
intentional purposeful actions, the rapidity of which can be increased
with effort. Such an increase in Attention Density, defined as an
increase in the number of observations per unit time, can bring into
play the Quantum Zeno Effect, which tends to hold in place both those
aspects of the state of the brain that are fixed by the sequence of
intentional actions, and also the felt intentional focus of these
actions. Attention Density is not controlled by any physical rule of
orthodox contemporary quantum theory, but is taken both in orthodox
theory and in our model to be subject to subjective volitional control.
This application in this way of the basic principles of physics to
neuroscience constitutes our model of the mind-brain connection.

6.1. Support from psychology of attention

A huge amount of empirical work on attention has been done since the
nineteenth century writings of William James. Much of it is summarized
and analyzed in Harold Pashler's 1998 book "*The Psychology of
Attention*." Pashler organizes his discussion by separating perceptual
processing from post-perceptual processing. The former type covers
processing that, first of all, identifies such basic physical properties
of stimuli as location, color, loudness, and pitch, and, secondly,
identifies stimuli in terms of categories of meaning. The
post-perceptual process covers the tasks of producing motor actions and
cognitive action beyond mere categorical identification. Pashler
emphasizes \[p. 33\] that the empirical "findings of attention
studies... argue for a distinction between perceptual attentional
limitations and more central limitations involved in thought and the
planning of action." The existence of these two different processes with
different characteristics is a principal theme of Pashler's book \[e.g.,
pp. 33, 263, 293, 317, 404\].

A striking difference that emerges from the analysis of the many
sophisticated experiments is that the perceptual processes proceed
essentially in parallel, whereas the post-perceptual processes of
planning and executing actions form a single queue. This is in line with
the distinction between "passive" and "active" processes. The former are
essentially a passive stream of essentially one-shot Process 1 events,
whereas the "active" processes involve effort-induced rapid sequences of
Process 1 events that can saturate a given capacity. This idea of a
limited capacity for serial processing of effort-based inputs is the
main conclusion of Pashler's book. It is in accord with the
quantum-based model, supplemented by the condition that there is a limit
to how many effortful Process 1 events per second a person can produce,
during a particular stage of his development.

Examination of Pashler\'s book shows that this quantum model
accommodates naturally all of the complex structural features of the
empirical data that he describes. Of key importance is his Chapter Six,
in which he emphasizes a specific finding: strong empirical evidence for
what he calls a central processing bottleneck associated with the
attentive selection of a motor action. This kind of bottleneck is what
the quantum-physics-based theory predicts: the bottleneck is precisely
the single linear sequence of mind-brain quantum events that von Neumann
quantum theory describes.

Pashler \[p. 279\] describes four empirical signatures for this kind of
bottleneck, and describes the experimental confirmation of each of them.
Much of part II of Pashler\'s book is a massing of evidence that
supports the existence of a central process of this general kind.

The queuing effect is illustrated in a nineteenth century result
described by Pashler: mental exertion reduces the amount of physical
force that a person can apply. He notes that "This puzzling phenomenon
remains unexplained." \[p. 387\]. However, it is an automatic
consequence of the physics-based theory: creating physical force by
muscle contraction requires an effort that opposes the physical
tendencies generated by the Schröedinger equation (Process 2). This
opposing tendency is produced by the Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE), and is
roughly proportional to the number of bits per second of central
processing capacity that is devoted to the task. So if part of this
processing capacity is directed to another task, then the applied force
will diminish.

The important point here is that there is in principle, in the quantum
model, an essential dynamical difference between the unconscious
processing carried out by the Schröedinger evolution, which generates
via a local process an expanding collection of classically conceivable
experiential possibilities, and the process associated with the sequence
of conscious events that constitute the willful selection of action. The
former are not limited by the queuing effect, because Process 2 simply
develops all of the possibilities in parallel. Nor are the stream of
essentially one-shot passive Process 1 events thus limited. It is the
closely packed active Process 1 events that can, in the von Neumann
formulation, be limited by the queuing effect.

The very numerous experiments cited by Pashler all seem to be in line
with the quantum approach. It is important to note that this bottleneck
is not automatic within classical physics. A classical model could
easily produce, simultaneously, two responses in different modalities,
say vocal and manual, to two different stimuli arriving via two
different modalities, say auditory and tactile: the two processes could
proceed via dynamically independent routes. Pashler \[p. 308\] notes
that the bottleneck is undiminished in split-brain patients performing
two tasks that, at the level of input and output, seem to be confined to
different hemispheres. This could be accounted for by the necessarily
non-local character of the projection operator P.

An interesting experiment mentioned by Pashler involves the simultaneous
tasks of doing an IQ test and giving a foot response to a rapidly
presented sequence of tones of either 2000 or 250 Hz. The subject\'s
mental age, as measured by the IQ test, was reduced from adult to 8
years \[p. 299\]. This result supports the prediction of quantum theory
that the bottleneck pertains to both "intelligent" behavior, which
requires complex effortful processing, and the simple willful selection
of a motor response.

Pashler also notes \[p. 348\] that "Recent results strengthen the case
for central interference even further, concluding that memory retrieval
is subject to the same discrete processing bottleneck that prevents
simultaneous response selection in two speeded choice tasks."

In the section on "Mental Effort" Pashler reports \[p.383\] that
"incentives to perform especially well lead subjects to improve both
speed and accuracy", and that the motivation had "greater effects on the
more cognitively complex activity". This is what would be expected if
incentives lead to effort that produces increased rapidity of the
events, each of which injects into the physical process, via quantum
selection and reduction, bits of control information that reflect mental
evaluation. Pashler notes \[p.385\] "Increasing the rate at which events
occur in experimenter-paced tasks often increases effort ratings without
affecting performance. Increasing incentives often raises workload
ratings and performance at the same time." All of these empirical
connections are in line with the general principle that effort increases
Attention Density, with an attendant increase in the rate of directed
conscious events, each of which inputs a mental evaluation and a
selection or focusing of a course of action.

Additional supporting evidence comes from the studies of the
stabilization or storage of information in short-term memory. According
to the physics-based theory the passive aspect of conscious process
merely actualizes an event that occurs in accordance with some
brain-controlled rule, and this rule-selected process then develops
automatically, with perhaps some occasional monitoring. Thus the theory
would predict that the process of stabilization or storage in short term
memory of a certain sequence of stimuli should be able to persist
undiminished while the central processor is engaged in another task.
This is what the data indicate. Pashler remarks \[p.341\] that "These
conclusions contradict the remarkably widespread assumption that
short-term memory capacity can be equated with, or used as a measure of,
central resources." In the theory outlined here short-term memory is
stored in patterns of brain activity, whereas consciously directed
actions are associated with the active selection of a sub-ensemble of
quasi-classical states. This distinction seems to account for the large
amount of detailed data that bears on this question of the relationship
of the stabilization or storage of information in short-term-memory to
the types of tasks that require willfully directed actions \[pp.
337-341\]. In marked contrast to short-term memory function, storage or
retrieval of information from long-term memory is a task that requires
actions of just this sort \[pp. 347-350\].

Deliberate storage in, or retrieval from, long-term memory requires
willfully directed action, and hence conscious effort. These processes
should, according to the theory, use part of the limited processing
capacity, and hence be detrimentally affected by a competing task that
makes sufficient concurrent demands on the central resources. On the
other hand, "perceptual\'" processing that involves conceptual
categorization and identification without willful conscious selection
should not be interfered with by tasks that do consume central
processing capacity. These expectations are what the evidence appears to
confirm: "the entirety of\...front-end processing are modality specific
and operate independent of the sort of single-channel central processing
that limits retrieval and the control of action. This includes not only
perceptual analysis but also storage in STM (short term memory) and
whatever processing may feed back to change the allocation of perceptual
attention itself \[p. 353\]."

Pashler speculates on the possibility of a neurophysiological
explanation of the facts he describes, but notes that the parallel
versus serial distinction between the two mechanisms leads, in the
classical neurophysiological approach, to the questions of what makes
these two mechanisms so different, and what the connection between them
is \[p.354-6, 386-7\].

After considering various possible mechanisms that could cause the
central bottleneck, Pashler \[p.307-8\] concludes that "the question of
why this should be the case is quite puzzling." Thus the fact that this
bottleneck and its basic properties seems to follow automatically from
the same laws that explain the complex empirical evidence in the fields
of classical and quantum physics means that the theory being presented
here has significant explanatory power for the experimental data of
cognitive psychology. Further, it coherently explains aspects of the
data that have heretofore not been adequately addressed by currently
applicable theoretical perspectives.

These features of the phenomena may be claimed by some to be potentially
explainable within a classical-physics-based model. But the possibility
of such an explanation is profoundly undermined by the absence from
classical physics of the notion of conscious choice and effort. These
consciousness-connected features, so critical to a coherent explanation
of the psychology of human attention, are however already existing and
specified features of the causal structure of fundamental contemporary
physical theory.

7\. Application to neuropsychology

The quantum model is better suited to the analysis of neuropsychological
data than models based on the classical approximation. For, just as in
the treatment of atomic systems, the quantum approach brings the
*phenomenologically described data* directly into the dynamics, in place
of microscopic variables that are in principle unknowable. Quantum
theory injects directly into the causal structure the phenomenal
descriptions that we human beings use in order to communicate to our
colleague the empirical facts. It thereby specifies a useful and
testable causal structure, while evading the restrictive classical
demand that the causal process be "bottom up"\-\-- i.e., expressible in
terms of local mechanical interactions between tiny mindless entities.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle renders that ideal *unachievable in
principle*, and the banishment of that microlocal "bottom up"
determinism opens the door to the quantum alternative of injecting the
phenomenologically described realities directly into the causal
structure in the way that is both allowed by and described by
contemporary physical theory.

Quantum physics works better in neuropsychology than its classical
approximation precisely because it inserts knowable choices made by
human agents into the dynamics in place of unknowable-in-principle
microscopic variables. To illustrate this point we apply the quantum
approach to the experiment of Ochsner et al. (2002).

Reduced to its essence this experiment consists first of a training
phase in which the subject is taught how to distinguish, and respond
differently to, two instructions given while viewing emotionally
disturbing visual images: ATTEND (meaning passively "be aware of, but
not try to alter, any feelings elicited by") or REAPPRAISE (meaning
actively "reinterpret the content so that it no longer elicits a
negative response"). The subjects then perform these mental actions
during brain data acquisition. The visual stimuli, when passively
attended to, activate limbic brain areas and when actively reappraised,
activate prefrontal cerebral regions.

From the classical materialist point of view this is essentially a
conditioning experiment, where, however, the "conditioning" is achieved
via linguistic access to cognitive faculties. But how do the cognitive
realities involving "knowing," "understanding," and "feeling" arise out
of motions of the miniature planet-like objects of classical physics,
which have no trace of any experiential quality? And how do the
vibrations in the air that carry the instructions get converted into
feelings of understanding? And how do these feelings of understanding
get converted to conscious effort, the presence or absence of which
determine whether the limbic or frontal regions of the brain will be
activated?

Within the framework of classical physics these connections between
feelings and brain activities remain huge mysteries. The materialist
claim (Karl Popper called this historicist prophecy "*promissory
materialism*") is that *someday* these connections will be understood.
But the question is whether these connections should reasonably be
expected to be understood in terms of a physical theory that is known to
be false, and to be false in ways that are absolutely and fundamentally
germane to the issue. The classical conception demands that the choices
made by human agents about how they will act be determined by
microscopic variables that according to quantum theory are indeterminate
in principle. *The reductionist demand that the course of human
experience be determined by local mechanical processes is the very thing
that is most conclusively ruled out by the structure of natural
phenomena specified by contemporary physical theory*. To expect the
mind-brain connection to be understood within a framework of ideas so
contrary to the principles of physics is scientifically unsupportable
and unreasonable.

There are important similarities and also important differences between
the classical and quantum explanations of the experiments of Ochsner et
al. (2002). In both approaches the atomic constituents of the brain can
be conceived to be collected into nerves and other biological
structures, and into fluxes of ions and electrons, which can all be
described reasonably well in essentially classical terms. In the
classical approach the dynamics must in principle be describable in
terms of the local deterministic classical laws that, according to those
principles, are supposed to govern the motions of the atomic-sized
entities.

The quantum approach is fundamentally different. In the first place the
idea that all causation is *fundamentally* *mechanical* is dropped as
being prejudicial and unsupported either by direct evidence or by
contemporary physical theory. The quantum model of the human person is
essentially dualistic, with one of the two components being described in
psychological language and the other being described in physical terms.
The empirical/phenomenal evidence coming from subjective reports is
treated as data pertaining to the psychologically described component of
the person, whereas the data from objective observations, or from
measurements made *upon that person,* are treated as conditions on the
physically described component of the person. The apparent causal
connection *manifested in the experiments* between these two components
of the agent is then explained by the causal connections between these
components *that is* *specified by the quantum laws.*

The quantum laws, insofar as they pertain to empirical data, are
organized around *events* that increase the amount of information lodged
in the psychologically described component of the theoretical structure.
The *effects* of these psychologically identified events upon the
physical state of the associated brain are specified by Processes 1
(followed by "Nature's statistical choice" of which of the discrete
options specified by Process 1 will be experienced.) When no effort is
applied, the temporal development of the body/brain will be roughly in
accord with the principles of classical *statistical* mechanics, for
reasons described earlier in connection with the strong *decoherence*
effects. But important departures from the classical statistical
predictions can be caused by conscious effort. This effort can cause to
be held in place for an extended period a pattern of neural activity
that constitutes a *template for action*. This delay can tend to cause
the specified action to occur. In the Ochsner experiments the effort of
the subject to "reappraise" *causes* the "reappraise" template to be
held in place, and the holding in place of this template *causes* the
suppression of the limbic response. These causal effects are, via the
Quantum Zeno Effect, mathematical consequences of the quantum rules.
Thus the "subjective" and "objective" aspects of the data are tied
together by quantum rules that *directly specify the causal effects upon
the subject's brain of the choices made by the subject, without needing
to specify how these choices came about.* The form of the quantum laws
accommodates a natural dynamical breakpoint between the *cause* of
willful action, which are not specified by the theory, and its
*effects*, which are specified by the theory.

Quantum theory was designed to deal with cases, in which the conscious
action of an agent -- to perform some particular probing action - enters
into the dynamics in an essential way. Within the context of the
experiment by Ochsner et al. (2002), quantum theory provides, via the
Process 1 mechanism, an explicit means whereby the successful effort to
"rethink feelings" actually causes - by catching and actively holding in
place - the prefrontal activations critical to the experimentally
observed deactivation of the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex. The
resulting *intention-induced modulation* of limbic mechanisms that
putatively generate the frightening aversive feelings associated with
passively attending to the target stimuli is the key factor necessary
for the achievement of the emotional self-regulation seen in the active
cognitive reappraisal condition. Thus, within the quantum framework, the
causal relationship between the mental work of mindfully reappraising
and the observed brain changes presumed to be necessary for emotional
self-regulation is *dynamically* accounted for. Furthermore, and
crucially, it is accounted for in ways that fully allow for
communicating to others the means utilized by living human experimental
subjects to attain the desired outcome. The classical materialist
approach to these data, as detailed earlier in this article, by no means
allows for such effective communication. Analogous quantum mechanical
reasoning can of course be utilized *mutatis mutandis* to explain the
data of Beauregard (2001) and related studies of self-directed
neuroplasticity (see Schwartz & Begley, 2002).

# 8. Conclusions

Materialist ontology draws no support from contemporary physics, and is
in fact contradicted by it. The notion that all physical behavior is
explainable in principle solely in terms of a local mechanical process
is a holdover from physical theories of an earlier era. It was rejected
by the founders of quantum mechanics, who introduced crucially into the
basic dynamical equations choices that are not determined by local
mechanical processes, but are attributed rather to human agents. These
orthodox quantum equations, applied to human brains in the way suggested
by John von Neumann, provide for a causal account of recent
neuropsychological data. In this account brain behavior that appears to
be caused by mental effort is actually caused by mental effort: the
causal efficacy of mental effort is no illusion. Our willful choices
enter neither as redundant nor epiphenomenal effects, but rather as
fundamental dynamical elements that have the causal efficacy that the
objective data appear to assign to them.

A shift to this pragmatic approach that incorporates agent-based choices
as primary empirical input variables may be as important to progress in
neuroscience and psychology as it was to progress in atomic physics.

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Appendix: Other Interpretations

This work is based on the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory,
and von Neumann's extension of it. The Copenhagen Interpretation is what
is, in essence, both taught in standard quantum physics courses and used
in actual practice. This interpretation brings the human agent into the
dynamics at a crucial point, namely to resolve the "basis" problem,
i.e., to pose some particular physical question. This entry of the
agent's "free" choice is the basis of the present work.

Many of the physicists who are most acutely interested in the logical
and physical foundations of quantum theory reject the Copenhagen
interpretation, which is basically epistemological, and have sought to
invent alternatives formulations that can be regarded as descriptions of
what is really going on in Nature. The three most-discussed alternatives
are the ones associated with the names of Roger Penrose, Hugh Everett,
and David Bohm. In order to provide a broader conceptual foundation for
understanding and assessing the Copenhagen-von Neumann approach used
here we shall compare it to those other three.

All three of the alternative approaches accept von Neumann's move of
treating the entire physical world quantum mechanically. In particular,
the bodies and brains of the agents are treated as conglomerations of
such things as quantum mechanically described electrons, ions, and
photons.

Penrose (1994) accepts the need for conscious-related Process 1 events,
and wants to explain *when* they occur. He proposes an explanation that
is tied to another quantum mystery, that of quantum gravity.

Suppose the quantum state of a brain develops two components
corresponding to the "Yes" and "No" answers to some query. Penrose
proposes a rule, based on the gravitational interaction between these
two parts, that specifies roughly how long before a collapse will occur
to one branch or to the other. In this way the question of *when* the
answer "Yes" or "No" occurs is given a "physical" explanation. Penrose
and his collaborator Hameroff (1996) calculate estimates of this typical
time interval, on the basis of some detailed assumptions about the
brain. The result is a time on the order of one-tenth of a second. They
argue that the rough agreement of this number with time intervals
normally associated with consciousness lends strong support to their
theory.

The Penrose-Hameroff model requires that the quantum state of the brain
has a property called *macroscopic quantum coherence,* which needs to be
maintained for around a tenth of a second. But, according to
calculations made by Max Tegmark (2000), this property ought not to hold
for more than about 10^-13^ seconds. Hameroff and co-workers (Hagen,
2002) have advanced reasons why this number should actually be on the
order of a tenth of a second. But twelve orders of magnitude is a very
big difference to explain away, and serious doubts remain about whether
the Penrose-Hameroff theory is technically viable.

If *all* aspects of the collapse process were similarly determined in an
essentially mechanical way, then there would be in quantum mechanics, as
in classical physics, nothing for consciousness to do. But Penrose
(1994) argues that the effects of consciousness cannot be purely
algorithmic: it cannot be governed by a finite set of rules and
operations. His argument is based on the famous incompleteness theorem
of Gödel. However, the logical validity of his argument has been
vigorously challenged by many experts, including Hillary Putnam (1994),
and Penrose's conclusion cannot be deemed absolutely secure. Also, it is
peculiar that the question of *when* the event occurs should be
essentially algorithmic, while the process itself is non-algorithmic.

However, Penrose's overall aims are similar to those of the approach
made in this paper, namely to recognize that the Process-1-related
features of quantum mechanics are dynamically very different from the
local mechanistic dynamics of classical mechanics, or of its quantum
analog, Process 2. This differing character of Process 1, which is
closely connected to conscious awareness, seems, on its face, to be
signaling the entry of an essentially non-mechanical
consciousness-related element into brain dynamics.

Everett (1957) proposed another way to deal with the problem of how the
quantum formulas are tied to our conscious experiences. It is called the
Many-Worlds or Many-Minds approach. The basic idea is that Nature
herself makes no choices between the "Yes" and "No" possibilities: both
options actually do occur. But, due to certain features of quantum
mechanics, the two streams of consciousness in which these two
alternative answers appear are dynamically independent: neither one has
any effect on the other. Hence the two incompatible streams exist in
parallel *epistemological* worlds, although in the one single
ontological or physical quantum world.

This many-minds approach is plausible within the framework provided by
the quantum mathematics. It evades the need for any real choices between
the "Yes" and "No" answers to the question posed by the Process 1
action. However, von Neumann never even mentions any real choice between
"Yes" and "No", and the founders of quantum theory likewise focus
attention on the crucial *choice of which question shall be posed*. It
is *this* choice, which is in the hands of the agent, that the present
paper has focused upon. The subsequent choice between "Yes" and "No" is
normally deemed to be made by nature. But it is enough that the latter
choice merely *seems to be made* in accordance with the quantum probably
rules. The real problem with the many-minds approach is that its
proponents have not yet adequately explained how one can evade the
Process 1 choices. This difficulty is discussed in detail in Stapp
(2002)

David Bohm's pilot-wave model (Bohm, 1952) seems at first to be another
way of evading the problem of how to tie the formulas of quantum
mechanics to human experiences. Yet in David Bohm's book with Basil
Hiley (Bohm, 1993) the last two chapters go far beyond the reasonably
well defined pilot-wave model, and attempt to deal with the problem
dealt with in the works of Stapp (1990) and of Gell-mann and Hartle
(1989). This leads Bohm into a discussion of his concept of the
implicate order, which is far less mathematically well-defined than his
pilot-wave model.

Bohm saw a need to deal with consciousness, and wrote a detailed paper
on it (Bohm, 1990, 1986). His proposals go far beyond the simple well
defined pilot-wave model. It involves an infinite tower of pilot waves,
each controlling the level below. The engaging simplicity of the
original pilot-wave model is lost in this infinite tower.

The up-shot of all this is that the structure of quantum theory
indicates the need for a non-mechanistic consciousness-related process,
but that the approaches to quantum theory that go beyond the pragmatic
Copenhagen-von-Neumann approach have serious yet-to-be-resolved
problems. We, in this paper, have chosen to stay on the safer ground of
orthodox pragmatic quantum theory, and explore what can be said within
that framework.

However, in this addendum we will now stray *very briefly* from our
strict adherence to the pragmatic stance, in order to get a glimpse into
what seems to us to be the pathway beyond contemporary pragmatic science
that is pointed to by the structure of contemporary physics.

The core message of quantum theory appears to be that the basic
realities are "knowables", not "beables": they are things that can be
known, not realities that exist yet cannot be known. This conclusion can
be strongly defended by a detailed analysis of quantum theory, but this
is not place to do so. However, given this premise, the program of
passing from the anthropocentric set of pragmatic rules to a conception
of the greater reality in which our streams of human consciousness are
imbedded takes on a different complexion. If Nature herself is built of
knowables, then the acts of knowing with which we are familiar should be
special cases of a pervasive set of similar acts: the world should
somehow be built of such acts, and of a substrate that is suited to be
acted upon by such acts, but that supports, as a matter of principle,
only what can become known by other acts. Acts of knowing become, then,
the primitives of Nature herself, along with the substrate upon which
they act. Conscious acts of probing must also be encompassed.

This way of understanding the meaning of quantum theory opens the door,
in principle, to the formulation of rules that allow the choices of
which probing actions are taken to depend not exclusively on the current
condition of the physically/mathematically described substrate\-\--i.e.,
the current state of the brain\-\--but also on prior acts of knowing.
Thus it could well be, as James's remarks suggest, that a mechanical
rule determines which thought is *initially* *caught*, but that felt
properties of the consequent act of knowing can influence the rapidity
of follow-up repetitions of the probing action.

It is not our intent to propose in this appendix some testable proposal
along these lines. We merely note that quantum theory seems naturally to
point to this route to an understanding of the reality that lies behind
our human-knowledge-based science.

Acknowledgements

The work of the second-named author (HPS) was supported in part by the
Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics,
Division of High Energy Physics, of the U.S. Department of Energy under
Contract DE-AC03-76SF00098. The work of the third-named author (MB) was
supported in part by a scholarship from the Fonds de la Recherche en
Santé du Québec (FRSQ).