The actual research paper: https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 The language of the

The actual research paper: https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/8/ENEURO.0291-24.2024 The language of the research paper is much better than that of the parent article, but it still uses the word "quantum" spuriously, without defining what they mean by that. As others posters have also noticed, the only experimental result is a confirmation of the older hypothesis that the microtubules must have some role in the normal operation of a neuron and when that role is impaired consciousness is lost. The mechanism of how the microtubules work is determined by quantum physics as for anything else of molecular sizes and it is neither more quantum nor less quantum than how other cellular organelles work. The research paper appears to use "quantum" with a special meaning, which however is not explained clearly. The protein molecules that compose a microtubule have various vibrational states, like any other molecules. Normally, the vibrational state of a certain molecule is one of the possible vibrational states, chosen at random with a probability distribution that is a function of temperature. What the authors appear to believe is that the vibrational states of the microtubules are not random, but many microtubules, including from different neurons, might be in the same vibrational state. However any such theory needs to be described with a great amount of detail, in order to be falsifiable. A microtubule is composed from many molecules of proteins, of several different kinds of proteins. The different protein molecules have different kinds of vibrational states. They do not say if in their theory all the protein molecules of a microtubule must be in the same state and which will be the correspondence between the vibrational states of different protein molecules, which cannot be the same. Normally, any molecule remains in a given vibrational state only for an extremely short duration, because at normal temperatures it interacts with the neighboring molecules, exchanging energy with them and transitioning to a different vibrational state, chosen at random. The paper does not give any explanation about what would prevent a microtubule to transition to another vibrational state, or if the transitions are acknowledged to happen, what would make any other microtubule to transition in the same way. Even supposing that the vibrational states of distant microtubules would somehow be synchronized at a given time moment, the paper does not mention any mechanism by which such a synchronization could affect in any way the functions of the neurons. So all the references to "quantum" in the paper are just some kind of mumbo-jumbo that does not provide any information about what they mean by it. What remains is that the microtubules must indeed have a crucial role inside a neuron, which is not yet understood. The paper itself mentions the most plausible role of the microtubules. The microtubules, which are molecular motors capable of contraction, are normally used for the transport inside a cell of various cell components. They might be involved in the transport towards the synapses of the neurotransmitters.