Consciousness and the Universe Quotes

“Either individually or in these larger arrays, microtubules are responsible for cellular and intra-cellular movements requiring intelligent spatiotemporal organization. Microtubules have a lattice structure comparable to computational systems. Could microtubules process information?”
― Roger Penrose, Consciousness and the Universe: Quantum Physics, Evolution, Brain & Mind

“Approximately 108 tubulins in each neuron switching and oscillating in the range of 107 per second (e.g. Pokorny 8 MHz) gives an information capacity at the microtubule level of 1015 operations per second per neuron. This predicted capacity challenged and annoyed AI whose estimates for information processing at the level of neurons and synapses were virtually the same as this single-cell value, but for the entire brain (1011 neurons, 103 synapses per neuron, 102 transmissions per synapse per second = 1016 operations per second). Total brain capacity when taken at the microtubule level (in 1011 neurons) would potentially be 1026 operations per second, pushing the goalpost for AI brain equivalence farther into the future, and down into the quantum regime.”
― Roger Penrose, Consciousness and the Universe: Quantum Physics, Evolution, Brain & Mind

“Microtubule automata within brain neurons could potentially provide another level of information processing in the brain.”
― Roger Penrose, Consciousness and the Universe: Quantum Physics, Evolution, Brain & Mind