The Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR model places the essential aspect of consciousness at the level of quantum computation in microtubules within the brain's neurons. "Tubulin" proteins comprising microtubules can switch between states ("bits") and also be in quantum superposition of both states simultaneously ("protein qubits").
The recent resurgence in consciousness studies has been fueled by better, more advanced tools, such as functional brain imaging, and by findings in neurophysiology and systems neurobiology, including those related to memory and language in animals and humans. Also crucial have been the contributions of some well-respected scientists, such as Francis Crick, president emeritus of The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif.; the late John Eccles, former professor of physiology and biophysics at the State University of New York, Buffalo; Gerald Edelman, of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego; and Roger Penrose, a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford.
Crick's collaborator, ...
