I am including quotations from an article by Danko Georgiev and James Glazebrook entitled, “Quantum Interactive Dualism: From Beck and Eccles Tunneling Model of Exocytosis to Molecular Biology and SNARE Zipping.” It was published in Biomedical Reviews, 2014, Vol. 25: 15-24. I include this article because it supports dualist interactionism proposed by Eccles and Beck and because it adds to the understanding of the designed machine components of synaptic transmission. It is most important to understand that these machine components were created by God through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit so that a bidirectional communion would be possible between the Holy Spirit and the human spirit and soul (mind, will, emotion). I submit that it is revelational to us in our time so that we can accept the communion with God He desired so long ago when He created Adam, a communion lost at the Fall but restored by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ who sent the Holy Spirit as He promised to those who are in repentance. Let us see what this article includes.
“The large-scale anatomy of the brain and its histology are currently well understood. . . . molecular neuroscience has made strides towards elucidating the structure and function of neurons down at the nanoscale. At the microscopic level, the brain is composed of neurons assembled into neural networks. Each neuron is composed of three compartments: dendrites, soma and axon, respectively specialized to input, process and output information by transmitting [encoded] electric signals.
“Sir John Eccles . . . was one of the first who understood the importance of quantum mechanics for resolving the mind-brain problem, and proposed that mental events can cause brain events analogously to how the wave function . . . in quantum mechanics determines the probability . . . for a given quantum particle to be found at a certain position x at a certain moment of time t. Because quantum mechanics governs the behavior of physical systems at the nanoscale level, Eccles hypothesized that quantum effects could be manifest in the process of neurotransmitter release. This appeared to be consistent with the principles of quantum mechanics because the synaptic vesicles are approximately of the right size (40 nm in diameter) so as to be subjected to the quantum uncertainty relations, and because the probability of exocytosis is much smaller than 1 upon each axonal depolarization. Importantly, his hypothesis made interactive dualism feasible.
“The general features of the Beck and Eccles model are as follows: . . . each axon terminal contains approximately 50 synaptic vesicles anchored in a presynaptic vesicular grid. When an axonal electric spike depolarizes the axon terminal, at most one synaptic vesicle releases its neurotransmitter content in the synaptic cleft, and the probability for such an event is approximately 0.4. Because each neuronal axon has over 1000 presynaptic axon terminals, if the neurotransmitter release was due to classical random thermal fluctuations, then brain functional mechanism would be thrown into complete havoc within seconds. In view of the organizational structure of the brain, Beck and Eccles concluded that the probability of release should be quantum mechanical in origin and subject to direct causal influence by means of one’s own consciousness [or mindful intent]. . . . exocytosis needs to be a conditional event depending upon the depolarization of the axonal terminal. This means that the influx of calcium ions is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, for exocytosis to occur. Instead, exocytosis is triggered by the quantum tunneling of a particle [quasiparticle] with mass m satisfying the one-dimensional Schrodinger equation. . . . The potential energy . . . in the Schrodinger equation acts as a barrier for the motion of the particle. . . . due to the requirement for continuity of the quantum wavefunction . . . the quantum particle is able to tunnel through the entire width of the potential energy barrier . . . and appear on the other side. . . . Beck and Eccles determined that their model is physically plausible if the mass of the quantum particle triggering the exocytosis is less than 6 hydrogen masses. . . From this estimate, they also concluded that a quantum mechanical trigger for exocytosis must reside in an atomic process such as the movement of a hydrogen bridge by electronic rearrangement.”
Georgiev and Glazebrook went on to consider additional features of the proposed model, and I refer you to their article. Specifically, they proposed vibrationally assisted tunneling in SNARE zipping which has been discussed in a previous blog. “Motivated by the molecular structure of the four-a - helix bundle of SNARE proteins, we have modeled the SNARE zipping using a quantum quasiparticle . . . propagating along the hydrogen bonds of the protein a - helices of the SNARE complex.”
The authors discussed how their model exhibits temperature dependence in contrast with that of Beck and Eccles which was temperature independent. The authors stated that “our own work demonstrated that the problems in the Beck and Eccles model are not of fundamental character.” They concluded their discussion stating that “quantum mechanics provides a unique opportunity for the construction of mind-brain interaction models without violation of the physical laws. Because quantum effects are most pronounced at the nanoscale, it is natural to expect that the putative models should be implemented at the molecular level inside neurons.”
My last several blogs have addressed these features in some detail, and I refer the interested reader to the articles cited. Again, I propose that the quantum trigger identified by Eccles, Beck and the authors of this article is identified as the “nonmaterial energy” by which interaction between immaterial and material entities occurs in dualist interaction.