Rethinking the Process of Vision

I propose that the outer segment of retinal receptors is the point where a quantum reality, whatever that turns out to mean, transitions from the physics of the quantum to the regime of slower, classical physics. In theory, the existence and placement of such a point has long been debated and has been accorded the term in physics “Heisenberg Cut”. The quantum spatial and temporal domains are determinative in the external world of light beyond retinal outer segments.  Interior to the eye, and beyond,  human nervous system requirements have evolved around the slower processes of classical physics and it is this regime that serves to convey the information of  external quantum reality to the brain and the senses.

In this context, and to go forward, it is crucial to first note the well documented finding that vision possesses the ability to detect and render discernible the interaction of single photons (or, in the spirit of this work, “single quantized interactions”). This has been known for years but I find in the literature no comments about the sheer wonder of this! Our advanced photonics technology of today cannot come close to accomplishing this feat. In the words of Charles Dickens “This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate”!

This single finding has always meant that quantum physics is inherently involved and must be considered in the ultimate understanding of the process of vision. Realization of this has been obscured in the literature of vision by thought  echoed over the years that all  vision processes occur in times consistent with human nervous system measurements such as  the  slow ionic (i.e., chemical ) transport of information. This culminates in such erroneous conclusions as the statement that the “the reaction of the eye is in milliseconds” when what is actually being measured is the reaction time of the human nervous system.

No satisfactory explanation has ever been put forward in the literature of vision for this unique ability of vision. Technologically, we cannot approach fabrication of an imaging array of millions of pixels each able to discern single quantized interactions - much less in a biological system at body temperature!  Albert Rose in his beautiful book Vision Human and Electronic, after noting this ability of the vision process, could only speculate that from an engineering viewpoint an electronic gain of a million or so must be present somewhere in the vision process although he admitted that he had no idea where this might be.  Rieke and Baylor  from a biochemical viewpoint, attempt an explanation but  I believe in a very speculative and  ultimately unsatisfactory manner

I have put forward in this work a specific proposal as to how I believe this capability comes about in the eye positing individual electronic retinal devices comprising adjacent quantum confined electron spaces of fixed dimension and variable dimensioned light wave-accepting space between them. These individual devices are obviously in the spatio-temporal domain that would support electronic characteristics allowing function at very high speed – perhaps as fast as femtoseconds (10^-15 sec) or less. In seeming support of this model, it has been noted by Peteanu et al that the first light interaction step in the vision process occurs in femtoseconds. (A quote from this reference: “These measurements demonstrate that the first step in vision, the 11-cis—-11-trans torsional isomerization of the rhodopsin chromophore, is essentially complete in only 200 femtoseconds”).   

Consistent with electronic device operation in this time domain a paper published by a group of us Tove, Cho, and Huth (The Importance of the Time Scale in Radiation Detection Exemplified by Comparing Conventional and Avalanche Semiconductor Detectors) some years ago would seem to be relevant to operation of these devices and may lead to an explanation for the ability of the eye to detect single quantized interactions at body temperature.. Electronic signal-obscuring noise (thermally induced or otherwise) is always a time integrated function. The faster the ‘time constant’ (in electronic terms) the lower the noise.

This introduces the realm of the quantum beyond the eye and presents a physical connection between the biological eye and external quantum physics based reality.

I have excerpted the following text from previous posts where I speculated on quantum and time connections with the vision process. Text is divided into three sections:

 

a.) Speculation about the idea that the diffractive retina of this explanation might represent the diffraction pattern of an externally perceived “Fourier reality” as proposed by Brian Hagan.

 

 b.) The connections that have been proposed to exist between a quantum reality and biological systems that have been put forward by Penrose, Frohlich and others.

 

 c.) Speculation as to a possible relationship of the Fourier/optical transform  of this geometric model to the proposal by Julian Barbour that time itself may not exist , in effect, that the eye views a “timeless reality”?

 

I. THE RETINAL MOTIF AS THE DIFFRACTION PATTERN OF EXTERNAL REALITY

As Penrose has written, the retina is an extension of the brain and therefore, in my words,  serves as the interface between the brain and external reality. What might this new diffractive retinal surface tell us about such external reality? In the formless model that a “photon interacts”  light refraction is not considered. I might note here the specific “eight-around-one” motif  of rods around cones at 7 1/2 degrees  which , surprisingly, is seemingly present in most (all?) biologically evolved photosensitive structures. This  realization of a diffractive retinal surface must mean that a frequency or Fourier domain imaging process,is inherent in forming the visual image.. Could it be that this motif represents a “Fourier objectification” of externally perceived realty, i.e., beyond the eye? Or, alternatively, that the retina represents the diffraction pattern of externally perceived reality?

I have made one initial foray into this thicket noting (again discussed elsewhere on this page) a potential association of this specific  octagonal motif with a spatially symmetric epitrochoidal figure. On either side the hexagonal symmetry of the all-cone and all-rod regions produces asymmetrical epitrochoids. Thus, spatial symmetry is a characteristic at the peak of the visible spectrum with an asymmetry on either side. Can this have any meaning?

Another starting point might be asking the question: what external reality might such an octagonal diffraction pattern represent? One possibility is an association with quasi-crystal geometric “tilings” of the genre that Penrose has discovered. Certain of these tilings display diffraction patterns with octagonal symmetry. In studying some of these tilings I can almost see a quasi- “added dimensional” effect. Could this be in some way what vision perceives?

Hagan  in a whimsical but thought provoking paper proposes that a Fourier transforming process is inherent  in overall perception of reality and a few of his words are worth quoting: under his heading “BIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF FOURIER TRANSFORMS” to wit:

“The two views of matter , wave or particle, are thus not really divorced, but rather, are inseparably connected through the Fourier transforming process. They are merely different aspects, in the true sense of the word, of the same reality. We will later mention the proposition that the human eye can make these Fourier transformations and so, probably, can the brain”.

Hagan thus saw, what I believe I have now provided a basis for, the actual mechanism of vision.

II. QUANTUM CONNECTIONS

Penrose  in his adventure into the “quantum mind” asks “Is there a role for quantum mechanics in brain activity?” He states:

“There is, in fact, at least one clear place where action at the single quantum level can have importance in neural activity, and this is the retina (Recall that the retina is a part of the brain).”

Penrose italicizes “retina” in the original text. He goes on to discuss the above discussed sensitivity of the eye to a few photons (or again in the context of this paper “quantized interactions”) and then proceeds to develop his ideas for a quantum/mind process..

It is my premise that the necessarily complementary quantization arises in biologically evolved photosensitivity not in the incident light but in the “absorbed mass” - the electron.  It really doesn’t matter which aspect of the classical/quantum duality is quantized! I believe that it is clear that an observation of the retinal structure leads to the conclusion that I have come to. I find it interesting how a mental construction such as “a photon interacts” told over and over again can so cloud reality and lead for so long a time down blind alleys!

This is perhaps the point to introduce what I believe to be the seminal paper of   Frohlich   proposing  that coherent states characteristic of biological molecules should result in long range order in biological systems, i.e., as Bose-Einstein condensates. I have felt since first reading his paper that such order was ultimately necessary to explain such systems above the usual chemical explanations (albeit that have been very successful up to this time!). I have often quoted an example - the cover of Scientific American some years ago spotlighted the protein ( or enzyme) that in “lock and key” fashion fitted into the DNA helix causing it to unravel or unwind. Now identification of this protein certainly represents an important step but questions occurred to me such as “where (certainly somewhere remote from this point) was this protein synthesized?” …and “how did it come to be ‘delivered’ to this site at precisely the moment it was needed?” These type of questions imply to me the need for some kind of (in military terms) {”command and control” system to order the spatio-temporal aspects of biological processes. In any event this is the aspect of Frohlich’s thought that interested me.

There was one aspect of Frohlich’s proposal that was considered possible to demonstrate experimentally. In a simple calculation he proposed very specifically that bilipid cell membrane would be found to oscillate in the millimeter wave region - at approximately 40 GHz as I remember. In a meeting here in California that Frohlich attended I remember him stating strongly that the fundamental vibrations would be phononic (i.e., mechanical) and were not electromagnetic in nature. I believe he agreed that they might, however, secondarily, cause vibration of charge (on the membrane surface) that could emit/absorb electromagnetic radiation. At the same meeting one experimentalist (from Canada whose name I cannot remember!) did report detecting such microwave emissions and in a rather curious way. His laboratory had been working for months with cell cultures and microwave receivers without success. One day during morning coffee (or tea) break the receivers suddenly began to emit the sounds indicating that they were detecting emissions. It turned out that a technician had inadvertently added nutrient to the cell culture and the cells were in the process of mitosis and seemingly emitting radiation. This raised the intriguing question: are these emissions characteristic of the processes of the living cell ?  Following the California meeting I remember that a group from the Los Alamos National Laboratory became interested in duplicating these experiments. I heard later that they had no success.

That is where I believe we stand today in 2002 - although intense interest has persisted around the world, no experimental evidence has been elicited to verify Frohlich’s hypothesis. I always thought that I understood the difficulties. If such a spatio-temporal ordering, information-bearing system were present, nature would by necessity design it to be commensurately as reliable (or secure) as the helical genetic replication process - which we now understand has been passed down free of errors for millenia. Morphogenesis information, for example, would have to be transmitted within and between cells in completely error free fashion totally independent of, for example, the thermal background of the biological system. An information bearing channel formed phononically (coherent excitonically) at such high frequencies “insulated” from it’s external environment by water seems a credible possibility. I remember calculating the attenuation of water at these frequencies and it was an extraordinary number of orders of magnitude! I feel that nature would use such a system with the corollary being that it would be very difficult to experimentally interrogate.

There, however, some indirect evidence supporting the Frohlich hypothesis which I will attempt to recount.

In the 1970’s a group of Soviet investigators reported a series of what they termed “athermal” microwave biological effects wherein certain cellular processes such as mitosis could be affected by extremely low levels of microwave radiation in the same millimeter band that Frohlich had proposed.. These reports proceeded to generate a great amount of interest around the world. The subject of possible mechanisms for such behavior at such extremely low microwave intensities became very controversial - a controversy that probably persists to this day. A second event then occurred. A German group (from, I believe, a Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart where Frohlich was in residence) reported successfully replicating the Soviet experiments. These results were presented at a special meeting held near Munich which I attended, The German group had done their work carefully and their presentation was very persuasive to the point that such low level microwave effects did indeed exist. The Soviet investigators who were invited were precluded from attending because of the politics of the time. I have not followed any subsequent work in Germany but I am aware that the Soviets (now Russians) have introduced “microwave medicine” treating diseases using low level microwave radiation in the millimeter band. I have no idea how successful (or unsuccessful) this effort is but it has achieved some notariety.

Another experimental result that potentially supports the Frohlich hypothesis is Hans Kuhn’s “photon funnel” discussed elsewhere on this webpage. An interpretation of this result is that energy is transduced mechanically laterally in lipid membrane (simulating cell membrane) over many molecular distances from single quantum interactions. The result is similar to a much earlier discovery made independently by Jelley and Schiebe studying chromophoric molecules in solution. They achieved an essentially lossless situation with the optical absorption and emission peaks being separated by only a few nanometers. They termed the effect “resonance radiation” with the entities in solution being termed either Schiebe or Jelley “aggregates”. Kuhn achieved the same result in a more controlled fashion using Langmuir Blodgett methods to incorporate the optically active molecules into lipid membrane - the funnel. A bit of startling intuition by Kuhn was the incorporation of space-filling octa decane molecules into the lipid interstices of the membrane layers which resulted in the shifting of the optical response from the usual, lossy, “Stokes shifted” absorption/emission character to the lossless resonance situation. I believe that this very much supports the proposal that some sort of mechanical solitonic vibration is involved. A seemingly important connection of the funnel result to actual biological cell membrane can be made in that nature inserts the cholesterol molecule into exactly the same interstitial lipid spaces as Kuhn’s octadecane!

I would mention the proposals that have been made by Hammerof et al proposing that the microtubules inherent in living cells are somehow involved in quantum / Frohlich processes… and on development of theories of  a quantum consciousness..Microtubules are mechanical structures that are constructed (and deconstructed) of inert tubulin by the cell in it’s various stages of mitosis etc. This group would propose that there is something fundamental about the cytoskeleton so produced. I don’t agree that there is anything fundamental about these materials or structures. I would believe that these, again mechanical, structures may serve as “high frequency, information-bearing, solitonically-transmissive, conduits” that would seem to be a necessary part of Frohlich’s concept.

III. ON THE FOURIER TRANSFORM AND TIME:

This transform brings spatial information into time coincidence at the focal (or Fourier) plane of a condensing optical lensing system such as the eye. Feynman in  “QED - The Strange Theory of Light and Matter” notes that this is the fundamental purpose of such an optical condensing lens. The thinner section of the periphery of the lens slows light less than rays passing through the thicker center with the result being that each ray arrives at the focal point of the lens at the same time - assuming, importantly that a single wavelength is involved.

At first blush such time coincidence would seem to be an absolute requirement for forming the image seen by the eye (or any image), i.e., all information about the image must arrive and be processed into the final form contemporaneously. This much must certainly be true. But…is it possible that such time coincidence might represent a timelessness as perceived by the retinal surface? It seems to me that the concept of “coherent time” might just as well be seen as a negation of time. The idea of a  reality without time is the subject of a  book by Julian Barbour  that I have found fascinating. I won’t go into detail about Barbour’s ideas here but the question that the above poses might be: are we moving through a timeless “many universe” reality and might the eye in this new view be the vehicle for such perception? In fact more question marks!

A particularly nice line from Barbour’s book - “the instant is not in time - time is in the instant”

On the near-in subject of the relationship of the transform to the retinal structure proposed - an optical lens is defined as a “Fourier transforming device”. In fact the lens actually performs a second, “inverse Fourier transform” in re-creating the original spatial image at the image plane. Thus the image formed by a lens is defined as “the Fourier transform of a Fourier transform”. Phase information is, however, lost in the latter image transformation. Phase information is only present at the focal or Fourier plane. The photographic images that we are accustomed to seeing contain only the amplitude information. There is a medium that does preserve phase information - holography - but we will not go down that line of thought here.

One must emphasize that the function of the extended retina that I propose is to spatially separate the electromagnetic wavelengths of the visible spectrum.  This is not the “frequency space” of the Fourier domain.

It follows from this model that the retinal surface satisfies the Fourier equation at each point, i.e., both light amplitude and phase can be determined at each point. This implies, to satisfy the Fourier equation, that the Fourier (or focal) plane and the image plane must be in coincidence. In a real sense then an actual image is detected on the retina.

 

GCH

Updated 7/7/08

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 9:58 am and is filed under Running Commentary . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.