Is Brain in a Superfluid State? Physics of Consciousness
Benoy Chakraverty
arXiv Preprint Archive December 16, 2010 preprint
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Physics.gen-ph Consciousness Quantum physics Cognitive development |
| Key points | Proposes that the sense of self ("I") arises as a thermodynamic phase transition in neural connectivity, analogous to superfluidity in physics. |
Abstract
The article "Physics of Consciousness" treats mind as an abstract Hilbert space with a set of orthogonal base vectors to describe information like particles, which are considered to be the elementary excitation of a quantum field. A non-Hermitian operator of Self is introduced to create these information like particles which in turn will constitute a coherent information field. The non - zero average of this self operator is shown to constitute our basic I. Awareness and consciousness is described very simply as a response function of these operators to external world. We show with a very simple neural model how a baby less than two years old develop self-awareness as the neural connectivity achieves a critical value. The all-important I is the basic cognitive order parameter of each human brain and is a result of thermodynamic phase transition from a chaotic disordered state to a symmetry broken coherent ordered state, very akin to physics of superfluidity.