NICK GREAVES

MIND AND MEMORY

G. Experimental Verification

POSSIBILITY OF EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION

The basis of a few possible experiments to verify Duplication Theory, given the funds, equipment and technical ability.

In 1985, I came up with the following very sketchy proposals for possible experimental proofs or demonstrations of Duplication Theory. At the time I concluded that the then current technology was not advanced enough to implement these requirements, but maybe now things have moved on enough and the complex circuits I proposed then should now be capable of construction, and implementation along the lines suggested. More crucially in May 2008 I came across an experiment conducted in the university of Milan which was surprisingly close in some practical details to my proposals, and the results for which were not anticipated or easily explicable and hence most thought provoking (https://homes.di.unimi.it.pizzi.pubbl.2009%20sseviterbo.pdf) or an earlier version which seems to have been deleted recently( http://www.cs.nps.navy.mil/people/faculty/baer/CompMod-phys/PizziWebPage/pizzi.pdf ). This leaves the position open for further variations on this experiment along the lines I propose below if the funding and initiative could be provided. Following the description of this experiment is my proposal for variations on this experiment which might produce further unexpected results.

Non-local correlations between separated neural networks.

Above is the title of this paper describing an experiment conducted by a group led by Prof. Rita Pizzi of the department of Information technologies, university of milan. The abstract read as follows:

“In recent times the interest for quantum models of brain activity has rapidly grown. The Penrose-Hameroff model assumes that microtubules inside neurons are responsible for quantum computation inside the brain. Several experiments seem to indicate that EPR-like correlations are possible at the biological level. In the past year very intensive experimental work about this project has been done at DiBit Labs in milan, italy by our research group. Our experimental set up is made by two separated and completely shielded basins where two parts of a common human DNA neuronal culture are monitored by EEG. Our main experimental result is that, under stimulation of one culture by means of a 630nm laser beam 300ms, the cross correlation between the two cultures grows up at maximum levels. Despite at this level of understanding it is impossible to tell if the origin of this nonlocality is a genuine quantum effect, our experimental data seem to strongly suggest that biological systems present non-local properties not explainable by classical models.”

The Experiment

The experiment is described in a power point presentation on the quantum mind made in Salzburg 2007 (see http://www.dti.unimi.it/~pizzi/ppt%20Salzburg.html) What they did was to insert multi electrode arrays (MEAs) into two separate bowls of human neuron cultures, ensuring that they were electronically shielded by a double opaque Faraday cage. A laser is connected up to one of the basins which is subjected to both bursts of electrical pulses (e.g. 40Hz 1 impulses for 300 ms) and laser stimulations (e.g. 1 ms pulses for 100 ms or 3 seconds). The signals from both MEAs were recorded and it was found that there was a cross correlation and coherence during both electrical and laser stimulations, suggesting similar behaviours between the two MEAs.

The same experiments were carried out with three bowls inside the one Faraday cage using MEAs connected to neurons, and controls: madrigel and culture liquid, and also just culture liquid, with the neurons stimulated by a laser (Madrigel is a chemically defined mammalian cell culture medium that supports maintenance and long term clonal growth of mammalian cells.). The two non neuron MEA bowls were contained again within more Faraday cages. The result was that the laser pulse aroused a simultaneous spike of activity only in the neural basin. The same process was carried out with light from a LED source which produced no such effect.

In order to check whether there was any vestige of interference from within the Faraday cages, an antenna was introduced therein and connected to a very sensitive spectrum analyzer, but no activity was detected during the laser pulses. Even more surprising was that when the laser was substituted with a dummy load simulating an equivalent current absorption, the same peaks of activity in the neural MEA were detected, but not when the LED source was substituted with a dummy load.

Conclusions made by the Pizzi team

It was concluded that the phenomenon was not due to the laser itself but to an electromagnetic field emanating from the laser supply circuit, even though this field was too small to be detected by their instruments. A further conclusion was that neurons appear to receive and amplify a signal whose value through the air, measured with a filar antenna, and before reaching the Faraday cage, is under 2mV (the sensitivity of their oscilloscope). This was despite the fact that in order to cause an action potential (spike) a neuron needs to be stimulated inside the cell with a 30 mV pulse. Further more in measuring the intensity of electromagnetic fields a Gauss meter was used with a sensitivity threshold of 70 uG. The laser supply circuit when turned on, generated in the vicinity of the Gauss meter around .002G, but when the Gauss meter was moved away beyond 30 cm the field intensity is below that detectable by the Gauss meter, and during the experiments the laser circuit was at least 50 cm distant

Possible Variations on the Pizzi experiment to demonstrate other effects suggested by Duplication Theory

A reconciliation of the Pizzi paper and the results anticipated by Duplication Theory is conveniently demonstrated by setting out below a shortened version of my original paper written in 1985 proposing experiments for verification, from which the similarity of my predictions 20 years ago can be discerned with the 2004 experiment. But before I do that I will first describe another version of the Pizzi experiment which should produce a result anticipated by Duplication Theory which might otherwise appear anomalous.

Using the same equipment as above the first and most obviously required variation must be to place the two separate bowls of neurons apart in separate rooms so that there is absolutely no chance of the second bowl receiving EM signals from the laser stimulating the first bowl. The amount of distance apart might first be at different ends of a building and then much further if results continue to be positive. Duplication Theory (DT) does not necessarily predict a strong connection in the latter instance although it would be a not improbable result if the two separate sets of neurons were cultured from the same source: indeed this latter would be a distinct requirement for DT to be manifested.

DT does however indicate the following might transpire: If the neurons were subjected to by a very complex pattern of bitmap stimulations by laser at very regular intervals, and this was done for, say, a number of hours, or possibly a number of days, then if the same neurons were left in the same location there might be a resonance effect detectable if the system were then stimulated by just the initial part of the laser signal so that the neurons, once instigated into some from of resonance, would continue to produce the same varied response as was engendered by the laser’s original continuing action.

Different lengths of time and different frequencies of laser and different patterns of bitmaps would need to be tried, but there should be some resonance effect experienced according to the Hypothesis set out by DT. If so, then this could not easily be justified by anything known in established scientific knowledge. The experiments that I suggested in 1985 as described below are based on this premise, but at the time there was no possibility of which I was aware that a sufficiently small and complex electronic circuit was available to produce such a resonance effect, but the use of a neural culture connected up to a multi electrode array must come quite close to this, and hopefully close enough to be able to register such an effect. The reason why there is also a simultaneous transmission effect is more difficult for me to justify other than to note that wherever one sort of resonance effect exists, it is always accompanied by a small degree of its corollary effect. In other words because no structure resonating with itself through time in one location to sustain a degree of inertia and permanence through time, no such structure can remain absolutely motionless since its component particles will be never be absolutely fixed but exhibiting some degree of motion. Thus, there will be some radiation (time duplication effect) emitted from the neurons stimulated by the first neurons which however small, and undetectable by instruments, might just be enough at near quantum levels to instigate a similar and simultaneous reaction by the second bowl of neurons.

Indeed once set in motion the second set might need no further volition from any external source to continue the pattern of the first if the latter had been set in a continuous pattern of stimulation for quite some time before hand.

To demonstrate how providential the Pizzi paper is for my own work, I have set out below a shortened version of my original proposals from 1985 which, if they could have been carried out at the time would have demonstrated the validity of Duplication Theory. Of course there was nothing then of which I was aware that was complex or sophisticated in the way of electrical circuits that were likely to be flexible and sensitive enough to demonstrate the required resonance effect through time. But the electronic stimulation of neurons would appear to be a possible answer, and a godsend as a possible proof for my proposals, and something for which I have been waiting for a couple of decades. From jaundiced experience I am prepared for the distinct possibility that the results I anticipate might not be forthcoming, but given the fact that the results produced thus far by the Pizzi group are inexplicably anomalous, I consider there is a reasonable chance that further variations on this experimental theme would clarify matters considerably.

What is especially encouraging for me about the Pizzi result is that it is only stimulation of neural tissue by a laser source which produces a resonance effect. If ordinary light from a LED source is used, there is no such result. But this is what one might expect simply because the laser source produces highly structured and identical frequencies of radiation, and the duplication or resonance effect of both structure and action become easily apparent only when they become highly intense and identically repetitive. LED light would contain far too much uncoordinated and irregular radiation to produce a palpable effect. The further fact that if a dummy load in the laser is used so that it is not directed at the unshielded bowl of neural culture, a resonance was still recorded in both bowls, has to be considered. This would seem to to indicate that just the degree of high structure radiation emanating from the laser circuits in the vicinity of the unshielded bowl is enough to cause a resonance effect therein, which in turn causes a similar resonance in the shielded bowl. In other words it is the presence of the high order and repetitive structure of the laser source which is crucial to the effect.

There is the final possibility that this duplication effect between two samples of brain cells cultured on to the microeletrode arrays from the same source of stem cells from a human foetus, is caused by quantum entanglement, predicted by Bell’s Theorem and demonstrated by the experiments of Alain Aspect in France and others. This effect can be rationalised by Duplication theory in principle, and if this is what we have herein the Pizzi experiment, then it seems that the connection at a distance between the two identical and very complex bowls of neural cells should be instantaneous and not mediated by the light speed.

April 2013: Dr. Pizzi has apparently been unable to repeat her experiment due to lack of funding but I heard from her in 2013 that it had been agreed that the experiment and maybe variations of it are to be carried out by Professor Bernroider of Sazburg University. He is a neurobiolgist specialising in neuro signalling. A positive result which indicates there can be no EM radiation between the two samples of neural tissue will be very thought provoking and should demonstrate that other mechanisms are involved in communications between very complex, highly ordered and near identical systems should be capable of rationalisation by Duplication Theory.


AMENDED AND CURTAILED VERSIONS OF ORIGINAL PAPER FROM 1985 ON EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION

Elements required for operation of duplication effects

It has already been noted in earlier sections that the greater the amount of complexity of structure and hence the greater degree of space duplication, the greater will be the resonance effect through time. Similarly, the time duplication effect is best observed when vast numbers of similar events take place together in a short space of time in one location. It was noted that this occurs most obviously in the flow of electric current, in that the similar actions of billions of identical electrons are involved, making the phenomena of time duplication very easily observable in the form of electro­magnetic transmission. However the postulated space duplication effect is not so apparent, and in order to demonstrate the validity of the theory, it is vital to be able to perform some experimental evidence of this resonance through time.

What is therefore required are a very large number of duplications of similar structures, with such duplication preferably carried out in short intervals of time. Therefore, if some electrically based experiment could be devised involving large numbers of highly structured electronic patterns, the desired effect should become observable. The difficulty is that, as has already been mentioned, electrons are virtually mass less and very energetic and hence hard to pin down to formal structures with large amounts of precise interval duplications.

In the original paper of 1985 I scheduled out a series of examples of differing ways of presenting increasingly structured alternating currents, using complex aerials or microchip circuits being rapidly spun in centrifuges. The first examples were far too basic and primitive to stand much chance of showing any structure resonance effect, and I have not bothered to rehearse them giving only the more sophisticated examples below given more or less in their original form. However the fundamental rationale of the experiment has not changed and is as follows.

If in some way an electrical circuit, highly complex down to molecular level, could be devised and then was fed a very regular instigating and structured signal such as a saw tooth wave so that the circuit fired repeatedly in the same manner at a high frequency, Duplication Theory indicates that there should be a potential for electronic circuit, and in particular its three dimensional structure to resonate on in the same location even when the instigating signal had been turned off. Such an effect could perhaps be exaggerated if the original circuit was left turned on and off at very regular intervals, so that the saw tooth signal at high frequency was left to run for a micro second and then turned off and then on again and so on at a high and very regular rate.

The way in which this resonance might be detected is hard to predict other than to say that if the circuit was left firing for some time, say 30 seconds (or possibly much longer than that), in one location then when turned off there might be a detectable potential for the same complex circuit left in exactly the same location, to repeat itself. If nothing was initially apparent then perhaps a very short burst of signal could be turned on and sharply cut of before it had run its full sequence, to see whether the circuit continued to reproduce the original full sequence. In other words it might resonate on, or show some potential to do so after a short later burst of signal had again been.

In the original draft of this website dating back to 2007, I had included some tenuous suggestions of how such experiments might be carried out These have now been deleted as too primitive, although technology having improved at an astonishing rate, and it should be possible to improvise some experiment along the lines described in principle above. However the practical application of technology is not a subject in which I am adept..

However there is one of my early proposals which I have not deleted which I describe as the hollow Sphere test, and which is set out briefly below. This is because of its correspondence with the Absorber theory of Feynman and Wheeler described elsewhere on this site. This implies that the universe is opaque so that it must be bounded and finite. I take this to imply it can only be a sphere, and presumably expanding out at light speed, as we have to assume the observable universe must be doing.

Hollow sphere test

To test this a further simple experiment at once suggests itself. If an oscillating charge source were placed inside a hollow conductor sphere so that all the energy transmitted to the sphere through instantaneous induction could be measured, there might turn out to be a tiny shortfall indicating energy loss between the work done by the oscillating source and that absorbed on the sphere. That deficiency would be accounted for by the potential for transmission of energy to other times in that location. This potential might depend on how long the sphere was to remain in that location and whether that potential were taken up in the future, or not. Again the more structured the oscillation of the charge the more should there be a potential for this resonance through time effect.

All the above proposals bring into play the possibility of acausal phenomena, and indeed, if some of the effects anticipated by the experiments were to result, it would be simple then to set up variations on the experimental theme which might then operate as very basic precognitive devices. However, this would probably depend on whether any energy, as discussed in the preceding paragraph, had the potential to be transmitted to the future and then a measurement made in the present of whether that energy were absorbed at some future time or not. Such a discussion would introduce a number of philosophical implications, which are beyond the scope of this paper.