Abstract: I propose here the hypothesis that the Xenon isotopes with integer spins – acting as bosonic particles – are more readily able to become coherent with the existing quantum state of dipole oscillations intrinsic to the microtubule due to their innate ability to occupy the same quantum state. Bosons are more primed for this quantum interaction of coherence to occur compared with their fermionic counterparts, which would be less likely or take longer, for their pi-orbital electron clouds to join in the quantum coherence – due to the Pauli Exclusion principle. This could explain Li’s finding that 1/2 spin Xenon isotopes have less anesthetic potency than their bosonic integer spin counterparts.

This is a follow up to my other post, detailing that Anesthesia Spin Studies Verify that Consciousness must be Quantum Based.

In the discussion section of Li’s study, and also in a commentary paper from Hameroff on these results, it is proposed that the reason spin ½ particles are less anesthetically potent is because fermions are more likely to maintain entanglement between particles due to their intrinsic stability caused by their magnetism [Li et al, 2018; Hameroff 2018]. It’s argued that if quantum entanglement solves the ‘Binding Problem’ and contributes to consciousness, then these spin ½ isotopes are more readily able to form entanglement with the existing entangled consciousness system, which results in an increase in consciousness rather than an anesthetic antagonization of it. 

However, if this were indeed the case, then why does the fermionic xenon isotope act as an anesthetic agent at all? Wouldn’t increasing the dosage result in more entanglement occurring, and therefore an increase of consciousness (if we were to accept and follow the propositions)? The results from the study instead show that spin ½ xenon isotopes are simply less potent and require a higher dosage to produce deleterious effects on consciousness. Following this proposition, a mechanism would need to be detailed on why this ‘increase in consciousness due to entanglement’ only occurs up to a certain threshold of fermionic xenon isotope dosage; such a mechanism could be decoherence due to the increase of the volumetric mass of xenon, for example.

Furthermore, the possibility of van der Waals London dispersion forces accounting for this mechanism was dismissed due to the authors calculating negligible differences between the polarizability between these fermionic and bosonic xenon isotopes. However, this dismissal of London forces as being the mechanism – based on this similarity of polarizability – may have been premature and not a sufficient enough reason to disregard it entirely from being significant. Based on a few foundational principles in quantum physics that weren’t fully discussed in their above-mentioned analysis, I will propose an alternative explanation in the following paragraphs for a potential mechanism of why different spins have different anesthetic potencies.

It is known by physicists that ‘Bose-Einstein condensates’ form with bosons rather than fermions due to the fundamental differences in their spin properties, where each consequently obey different statistical rules governing their wave functions: Fermi-Dirac statistics for fermions and Bose-Einstein statistics for bosons [Griffiths, 2005]. While there are technical and mathematical reasons for this distinction, in essence the key difference is that fermions are constrained by the ‘Pauli Exclusion principle’ which prevents identical fermions from occupying the same quantum state within the same system [Griffiths, 2005]. This restriction forces fermions (such as electrons and other ½ spin particles) to occupy different positions and fill other electron orbitals – a fundamental reason why ‘matter’ behaves as a solid. In contrast, bosons are not subject to this restriction of Pauli’s Exclusion principle, allowing them to collectively ‘condense’ and occupy the same quantum state and energy level, leading to macroscopic quantum coherence.

In a similar spirit, Fröhlich coherence also describes how van der Waals London forces can enable collective quantum coherence in biological molecules; Penrose and Hameroff propose that this occurs within microtubules due to oscillations of pi-orbital electron clouds. It should be noted that despite sharing the similar property of macroscopic quantum coherence, Fröhlich coherence differs from Bose-Einstein condensation in terms of their mechanisms. While Bose-Einstein condensates form through the bosonic occupation of a single quantum state, Fröhlich coherence emerges from collective dipole oscillations of pi-orbital electron clouds; both though are described to have an effect of “condensing” into a single state and act as a bosonic system. Although electrons are fermions, coherence can still arise in systems involving fermionic components, as seen with “Cooper Pairs” of electrons in superconductivity which makes them behave together as bosons [Bardeen, Cooper & Schrieffer, 1957], or also in polarizable pi-orbital electron clouds through the synchronization of their dipole oscillations creating a common quantum phase of coherence [Hameroff, 2018]. This synchronization can result in the overlap of individual wavefunctions, causing the position of the electron clouds to also become less defined due to the collective nature of the quantum state. It should be noted here that the total spin of a system, such as a molecule, is composed by the “vector sum” of the intrinsic spin of its sub-components (such as electrons, neutrons, protons, quarks, and orbital angular momentum) [Griffiths, 2005].

To return from this deviation into physics and back to the matter at hand regarding the mechanism of spin and anesthetic potency, Hameroff proposes that anesthesia molecules first coherently oscillate with, and then afterwards disperse these natural oscillations from occurring within microtubules through London dispersion forces. I propose here the hypothesis that the xenon isotopes with integer spins – acting as bosonic particles – are more readily able to become coherent with the existing quantum state of dipole oscillations intrinsic to the microtubule due to their innate ability to occupy the same quantum state. Bosons are more primed for this quantum interaction of coherence to occur compared with their fermionic counterparts, which would be less likely or take longer, for their pi-orbital electron clouds to join in the quantum coherence – due to the Pauli Exclusion principle.

This might also explain why halogenated anesthetics interact through quantum mechanisms with entangled photons but not classical photons, as the quantum coherence is less likely to occur with the already ‘classically collapsed’ photons [Burdick et al, 2019]. This would account for a difference in isotopic anesthetic potency dependent on spin, which still utilizes London dispersion forces as a mechanism but isn’t dependent on differences in polarizability (which only acts a necessary pre-requisite condition for this interaction to take place in the first place). This theoretically makes sense, but is there any existing supporting evidence for this hypothesis?

One study found that when fruit flies are given a variety of different anesthetics, they measured an “increase in spin” (as detected by magnetic moments) present within the fruit flies [Turin et al, 2014]. This could be indicative that within the fruit flies, there was a significant increase in the presence of fermionic particles within their ‘total system’ after receiving a dosage of anesthesia. This result is consistent with Orch OR theory’s proposed mechanism of anesthesia and is also supportive of the above hypothesis: if the inherent oscillations of pi-orbital electron clouds within the fruit flies microtubules are disrupted due to the anesthesia, then these previous bosonic states of Fröhlich coherence (where the electrons innate spins effectively ‘cancel each other out’) will ‘decohere’ the electrons into behaving individually again as fermions, thus resulting in an increase of the total number of fermions – and consequently, magnetic moments – within the fruit fly. This is detected as the “increase of spin” which was observed in the experiment. Furthermore, this finding is indicative that consciousness is more correlated with bosonic states rather than fermionic particles – as proposed by others due to fermions innate stability for entanglement [Fisher 2015; Li et al, 2018] – since anesthesia looks to be correlated with a reduction of bosonic states and an increase of fermions, from within this interpretation of the experimental results. As a speculative aside, this would make sense given that phenomenological consciousness seems to ‘coagulate’ various qualia into a unitary experience, like how the energy within bosons condense into a unitary state, rather than repel against each other.