Photons and Consciousness

The role of biophotons in the brain is a growing area of research in neurobiology – and where there are photons there might be quantum mechanics. The light of the mind is blue, wrote the poet Sylvia Plath ('The Moon and the Yew Tree' 1961). But it seems it may actually be red. That’s because recent research suggests a link between intelligence and the frequency of biophotons in animals’ brains. In 2016 Zhuo Wang and colleagues at the South-Central University for Nationalities in China studied brain slices from various animals (bullfrog, mouse, chicken, pig, monkey and human) that had been excited by glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter. They found that increasing intelligence was associated with a shift in the biophoton’s frequency towards the red end of the spectrum.

Admittedly, it is unclear what the measure of intelligence actually is, and the study has drawn criticism for its lack of an explanatory mechanism; correlation, as the mantra goes, does not mean causation. However, the role of biophotons – spontaneous ultra-weak near-ultraviolet to near-infrared photons in biological systems – is a growing field of research in neurobiology.

Light has such symbolic resonance for humanity. It features in art, religion, literature and even in how we talk about knowledge – we speak of 'enlightenment' and 'seeing the light', for example. It seems fitting, therefore, that it might play a physiological role as well. Just how light is involved in the signalling processes that constitute the central nervous system and its emergent property, consciousness, is still not clear. But inevitably, where there are photons, there might be quantum mechanics.

Photons, after all, are inextricably linked to the birth of quantum mechanics: Albert Einstein’s 1921 Nobel prize was awarded not for relativity or other discoveries, but for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. He theorized that light, which was conventionally accepted to behave as a continuous wave, might also be considered to propagate in discrete packages, or quanta, which we call photons. This, along with Max Planck’s understanding of blackbody radiation, Niels Bohr’s new model of the atom, Arthur Compton’s research into X-rays, and Louis de Broglie’s suggestion that matter has wave-like properties, ushered in the quantum age.

While the weirdness of quantum theory has lent itself to some unhelpful pseudoscientific interpretations of consciousness, there has been resistance from scientists to yoke the two together. Just because both subjects are difficult to understand, does not mean that they necessarily inform each other.

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