How Schrödinger’s Mice Weave Consciousness

Abstract

This paper continues the series of papers on DNA resonance signaling. Previously the authors proposed that DNA is involved in the work of mind directly and immediately via the network of optical fibers. The authors proposed the mechanism of signal transduction in DNA via a sequence-specific resonance between the clouds of delocalized charges in the base stack. It was computationally demonstrated that certain repetitive patterns of delocalized charge clouds were evolutionarily enriched in various genomes. Here, the authors propose that natural quantum computation in DNA in living cells is based on the tautomerization of basepairs and involves coordinated oscillations of hydrogen-bond protons and aromatic electrons. The authors expand the ORCH-OR theory to include the collapse of the wave function of aromatic electrons in purines and propose that such collapses and expansions produce the experience of consciousness and the perception of time. The above mechanisms are supported by an observation that the majority of the psychoactive drugs are aromatic and the suggestion that they modify the aromaticity of DNA by binding to it. Quantum mechanical considerations for the collapse of aromaticity by double proton transfer in basepairs are discussed in terms of the collapse of the wave function, loss of delocalization, and the dynamic balance between coherence and decoherence in DNA.