QMB: The Umezawa–Vitiello Model

Umezawa's Hypothesis

In the 1960s, when the physics of living systems became stalled, a Japanese scientist, a noted expert in quantum field theory, almost accidentally became intrigued by the memory problem. He looked at it from a fresh, unbiased perspective, wondering — what, in principle, could explain all its oddities, if we set aside traditional views? And he dared to suggest that memories and thoughts are nothing but the result of spontaneous symmetry breaking in some quantum system [7]. This is what explains the instantaneous coherence throughout the brain, the persistence of memories and their independence from the fate of individual cells. At the same time, neurons have not been disregarded: they are the first to act — responding to external stimuli, they begin their ‘firing’ of electrical impulses. But their role is auxiliary — they only help other participants that are living not in the macro but in the micro world. Neural signals activate not the classical but the quantum dynamics of the hypothetical micro-objects that fill the entire space of the brain. Initially disordered, they transition to a state of stable order and maintain this order, like the atoms in crystals, exchanging quasi-particles, their collective vibrations. These quasi-particles, which can also be considered waves, create an oscillatory background that, in turn, affects neurons and coordinates their work. Collective oscillations become a kind of ‘code,’ which, once it emerges, is persistently preserved in the brain. It condenses in an energy minimum, forming a non-equilibrium condensate, like the Fröhlich condensate described above, and can then be reactivated by a familiar stimulus — so that the brain re-enters the same dynamics, ‘recalling’ what was previously memorized.

Further Development: The Works of Vitiello

Official science treated the idea with disdain — in those days, it was deemed ridiculous to think about boson condensation in warm, wet matter. In addition, it wasn’t clear what these hypothetical ‘agents’ are that fill the brain and obey quantum laws. In general, the theory was not accepted by the mainstream scientific community, yet it still developed to some extent. Thus, one of its proponents came up with a simple idea: these mysterious micro-objects are nothing more than water molecules, which, as we know, comprise ninety percent of the brain [8]. First, they are quite small, and second, they have a dipole moment possessing rotational symmetry. It is this symmetry that becomes broken — simply put, the dipole vectors line up in one direction, as they do in magnets. And then, in addition to the water molecules, some other molecular fragments (like, for instance, C=O and N–H groups) were taken into account to form a general quantum environment, a matrix of dipole moments, in which classical neurons are immersed, although some still prefer to call it a water matrix, which doesn’t change the essence. The joint oscillations of the dipoles are dipole waves — again very similar to spin waves in ferromagnets. Their quanta are those same Goldstone bosons, maintaining the orderliness of the dipoles. It is precisely in these quasiparticles that our memories and thoughts are encoded [9].

Around the same time, the quantum model of the brain was taken up by the Italian scientist Giuseppe Vitiello, who had previously worked with Umezawa in the USA while completing his PhD thesis. It was he who made the decisive contribution to the model’s further development. In particular, Vitiello, along with his colleagues, identified intermediaries between the dipole waves and the neurons, arguing that they were microscopic protein threads – filaments that form a network vastly more extensive and intricate than the neuronal structure, both inside and outside brain cells [9, 10]. These threads carry electromagnetic field perturbations, triggering spontaneous symmetry breaking — that is, the ordering of dipoles, and this order is ‘felt’ by other threads, in other cells, however far away they may be. So, neurons, without knowing it themselves, send instantaneous signals to each other over long distances, coordinating their work. Then he demonstrated that the heat of the brain does not kill quantum effects — the density of the dipole waves is sufficient to withstand thermal energy. Moreover, a significant part of the dipole matrix is interspersed by those same protein threads that help counteract disorder — as if ‘sensing’ that a coherent state is the most advantageous [9, 11]. And later, Vitiello solved the main problem impeding the advancement of the quantum model of the brain — the problem of memory capacity, that is, why new memories, when ‘recorded’ in the brain, do not erase the old ones.

The core of the issue is: the math asserts that distinct asymmetric — that is, ordered — states cannot transform into each other. First, a quantum system must return to symmetry, to disorder — and only then slide into a different energy minimum, encoding something new. Meanwhile, the old code seems to be erased – but Vitiello proved the opposite. He focused on the brain’s thermal exchange with the environment — previously, the brain was considered an isolated system with energy that is constant over time. This approximation seemed to be justified — the brain is very thermostatic; its temperature is almost unchanging, a well-known fact. But he attempted to dig deeper into this ‘almost unchanging temperature’ and made a breakthrough: viewing the brain as an open system, he rigorously demonstrated that the prohibition on transitions between stable states applies to the totality of ‘the brain plus the environment’ and not to the brain alone. The dipole matrix forms diverse patterns of oscillations — the memory states — that are independent of each other, do not interfere with previous ones and live simultaneously with them – like countless shades of color coexisting within a beam of white light. The brain creates them, adapting to the ever-changing environment, and accumulates experiences, like images on photographic film. At the same time, the combined state — the brain plus the outside world — remains near the same energy minimum, rising slightly above it and falling back — and this is precisely the thermostatic behavior I mentioned. But this ‘slightly’ turns out to be vitally important; it contains the deepest meaning [12].

Thus, the problem of memory capacity was solved. Different quantum condensates — different types of dipole waves — encode a multitude of memories. They coexist and await their moment to come alive at the signal of certain neuronal groups to resonate and become dominant, either transiently — this is how a quick memory or thought flickers briefly — or maybe for a long time, if the stimulus that triggered them is sufficiently persistent. Then other existing memories become activated, and new ones get created along with them — the brain accumulates experiences and makes use of those already stored, and none of them interfere with each other. And the basis for this is the perpetually evolving world around us, which the brain ‘perceives’ via receptors and thermoregulatory means — the surrounding fluid, capillaries and blood vessels. Remember, the very essence of the existence of the brain and our bodies, like any living matter, is nothing but interaction with the environment!

It should be added that, when transitioning from an ideal, boundless, and "cold" brain space, isolated from informational noise, to the real-world case – a brain of finite size, operating in a specific thermal regime and bombarded by signals from myriad receptors – the lifespan of the quantum condensate encoding memory becomes finite. As a result, the brain not only remembers but also forgets: some memory fragments vanish quickly, erased by fluctuations, while others persist and are easily recalled. This all depends on the degree of the brain's training with respect to certain tasks, situations, or objects – that is, it depends on the structure of synaptic connections, which provide initial conditions for the quantum processes [13, 14]. This is precisely where the "quantum" and the official ("neural engram") paradigms intersect – not contradicting, but complementing one another (for more details, see here).