A SUMMARY STATEMENT

Beginning with my interest in the concept that light interacts with spatial antenna dimensionalities proposed in a U.S. patent (Marks) it became clear that, when applied to the retina of the eye, this type of spatial interaction explained a great deal that had been heretofore left unexplained in the vision process. Examples include providing a basis for understanding the anomalous color vision experiments and reasoning of Edwin Land, an explanation for the longstanding conundrum of color constancy in vision, the primal cause of the medical condition termed macular degeneration, and the processes involved in color variant vision (color blindness). Parenthetically, it also became clear that the retina of the eye evolved as the direct biological embodiment of the principles of the diffraction of light – nothing more! All of this is discussed in Huth. Specifically, it is seen that light interacts as the wave of classical physics in the space between receptors and not in the body of the receptors themselves that has for so long assumed. In the retinal structure these light wave-accepting spaces are immediately adjacent to quantum confined electron (EQC) spaces (formed by the receptors themselves) that constitute the absorbing mass. It is then seen that the rhodopsin protein within receptors has a structural function in conducting light energy to the signal-producing isomerization of the retinal molecule. Using this construction it immediately becomes clear that the plan of the retina actually forms a geometrically-defined 2-D Fourier transforming surface whose properties follow directly (calculated) from the historically measured, and oft quoted, asymmetric morphology of retinal receptors (“Cone-Rod Distribution in Human Retina”, G. Osterberg, Acta Opthalmologica, 1935).To my knowledge this is the first time that Osterberg’s data has been explained rationally. Harris in a recent proposal has also concluded that the retina is a Fourier surface.

The human eye possesses the remarkable and well documented ability to discern the interaction of single photons (Rose) but the mechanism involved in this biological structure has never been forthcoming. I propose that this gives, or should have given, credence to the idea that quantum theory is somehow involved in the vision process. We really must give thought to this! My work may provide an answer in positing that the vision process actually operates in at least two distinctly separate time domains. The first: TIME DOMAIN A is located at the outer segments of retinal receptors where the initial light interaction occurs. This interaction is in very fast time indeed it having been shown (Hamm ) the first step in vision – the cis-trans isomerization of the retinal molecule – occurs in femtoseconds (10^-15 sec). In the subsequent TIME DOMAIN B, signal processing involves slower ionic mechanisms characteristic of the biological sub-retinal “circuitry” and in transit through the optic nerve. This time domain has the function of “slowing down” the visual image information to human nervous system proportions. Times here approximate milliseconds (10^-3 sec). Consideration of time and space involved in A. defines this as a “quantum domain” interaction. Might it be therefore that it is light interaction with the outer segments of retinal receptors that represents the interface between quantum reality (whatever that turns out to mean!) and the human system. The slower, millisecond, reaction of B has long been misunderstood as the “reaction time of the eye”.

The retinal outer segment light detection centers (“devices”) that I have defined , comprising sub-micron interreceptor spaces and EQC centers, conceptually possess electronic properties (capacitance, etc.) consistent with signal response in this time domain. Electronic noise is a time integrated function. Viewing light interaction (signal generation) in times as short as femtoseconds brings in the role of time (Tove and Huth) in reducing electronic noise. This effect may explain the extraordinary sensitivity of the visual process.

I have proposed that the retinal outer segment devices possess the ability to detect light intensity and phase as required by the Fourier equation. This follows from the initial geometric explanation of the plan of the retina as a diffractive Fourier surface based on an “antenna” model. Such a surface encoding light intensity and phase behaves as (or is the definition of) the phase conjugate “mirror” (Phase Conjugation) so well known in the laser field. Such a mirror surface reflects each light ray back upon the exact path on which it entered, in this case, the eye, and in the process eliminates the effect of scattering. The retina acting as such a surface, as I believe, would explain the longstanding conundrum as to why the outer segments seem to “point the wrong way” ( for example, a recent paper (Svet) discusses the problem of image distortion by light scattering in passing through the sturucture of the inner segments of retinal receptors). These thoughts lead, in turn, to perhaps the idea that the eye, instead of being the passive receiver that has for so long been assumed, may actually re-radiate a signal that corresponds to the visual image back into the external environment/world along the phase conjugate path, It is well understood that antennas in addition to detecting electromagnetic radiation can equally well transmit such radiation. Might the eye actually transmit? And, if this were so, might this provide an “interconnectedness” with the external environment relevant to the subject of consciousness? I have made the point above that the plane of retinal outer segments where initial light interaction occurs can by definition be said to operate in the space and time realm of quantum physics. Might this plane be the “Heisenberg Cut” –the point an observed system from an observing apparatus in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory – the point .that divides the probability wave nature of quantum reality with the classical reality of macroscopic “things” that we see and feel everyday. I’ll not go further into this deep (!) subject but will add the following quotes that seem to show that others have thought along these lines:

“Von Neumann tackled these problems by considering an idealized situation
in which there is a sequence of measuring devices, each probing the output
of the device that precedes it in the sequence, and by then following the
causal chain first into the retina of the observer, and then into the optic
nerves, and then ever deeper into the brain until at last the entire brain of the
observer is treated quantum mechanically, along with the rest of the physical
universe”.(italics mine / GCH)

“Quantum mechanics rationally accommodates, therefore, a two-way causal linkage between mind and brain, whereas the concepts of classical mechanics provide no rational foundation for a causal connection in either direction. Quantum mechanics leads, consequently, to a radical revision of the conception of man. Whereas classical physics reduces man to a machine, quantum mechanics allows man to be an injector of physical counterparts of mental concepts into the structure of the physically described world. Physical counterparts of mental concepts can be identified and honed into brains by trial and error learning”.
(Henry P. Stapp, “MIND, MATTER AND QUANTUM MECHANICS”, Second Edition)

Submitted:

Gerald C. Huth, Ph.D.,
Ojai,CA
4/9/08