On Tue, 2009-08-18 at 11:09 -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: > It has long been noted that microtubles are ubiquitous in the cells of other > organs, not > just in the brain.
While I find the Penrose/Hameroff proposal very unconvincing for other reasons, this is not one of them. There are many shared organelles that are in both neuronal and non-neuronal cell bodies. It is a matter of organizing them for use one way or another. The voltage-gated sodium ion channel pore used for propagating an event potential down an axon is also present in cells outside the nervous system, yet the brain is able to use them to effect (dare I say?) computation. So it is at least plausible that microtubules, though ubiquitous throughout the body, have been recruited and honed by evolution to operate in the fashion proposed by Penrose/Hameroff in the nervous system. Personally, I think their whole agenda is misguided, an example of "brains are mysterious, quantum mechanics is mysterious, therefore, brains operate using quantum mechanics." The "mystery" of quantum mechanics largely disappears with no-collapse and decoherence anyway. Johnathan Corgan --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
