Biophotons discovered in the brain

[Nachtweide]

I was interested in the question: is the halo only the expression of the amount of photons that man collects and passes on? This article was very plausible to me in the explanation.

http://www.dieter-broers.de/direkte-verbindung-unseres-bewusstseins-mit-licht-ist-wahrscheinlich/

Dear friend,

Today I would like to draw your attention to a spectacular discovery from Canada.

Researchers at the University of Calgary found that neurons in mammalian brain are capable of producing photons, which are light particles, or "biophotons". Most notably, the detected photons occurred within the visible spectrum of the electromagnetic wave bandwidth. Photons were found in a wavelength range from ultraviolet to infrared, with wavelengths of about 0.2 to 1.3 microns (μm).
The scientists around the team leader Christoph Simon are fascinated and believe that the neurons of our brain could be able to communicate through light. They suspect that our brain could have optical communication channels. However, you still have no idea what kind of information could be communicated.

But it gets even more exciting, the research team suspects that in the case of optical communication using brain biophotons, they could also transmit quantum information. Thus, it would also be conceivable that our brain could be influenced by quantum entanglement. In plain language this means that there could be a strong connection between the biophotons of our brain, our consciousness and what many cultures and religions call spirit. Biophotons are particles of light that are produced by living things. They were first described by my friend and research colleague Fritz-Albert Popp. Popp is a member of the ICRL Group, a private successor to the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory at Princeton University, which has been researching paranormal effects.

He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences. He founded the association International Institute of Biophysics e.V., which now runs an institute on the "Museum Island" of the Insel Hombroich Foundation. In a series of experiments it could be shown that in rat brains only one biophoton per minute can pass per neuron, whereas human brains can transmit more than one billion biophotons per second. What raises the question of whether it could be possible that the more light a living creature can produce and the stronger the communicative exchange between its neurons, the more conscious the living being is?

If there is indeed a connection between biophotons, light, and consciousness, this could have far-reaching implications, and it would mean that light is much more important than we currently realize. Please think for a moment. Many texts and religions that date back to the origins of human civilization have narrated saints, people ascended to heaven, and enlightened persons, all depicted with circles of light around their heads. From ancient Greece and ancient Rome to the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, to many other religions of the world, saints were depicted with a luminous circle, a circular glow around their heads.

If they were enlightened in a way as described in the literature, then this glowing circle was perhaps only the expression of the higher consciousness with which they operated, ie a higher frequency and an increased production and release of biophotons. Perhaps because of their enlightened state these people simply produced more biophotons with increased intensity. This is conceivable if the connection shown here between biophotons and consciousness actually exists, which I think is very likely. Even the word enlightenment suggests that this higher consciousness has something to do with light.

But I think one of the most exciting and far-reaching implications of this discovery, that our brain can produce light, is that both our consciousness and our mind are outside our body. This conclusion is completely ignored by the scientists cited here. Quantum entanglement means that two entangled photons will respond without delay if one of the photons is affected, no matter where the other photon is in the universe. There may be a separate universe of light, and no matter where we are, the photons from this universe could serve as portals that enable communication between us and the other world. Maybe our mind and our consciousness communicate through our biophotons with our bodies. And the more light we produce, the more we are awakened and aware, and the more we embody the wholeness of our consciousness.

This would then explain the phenomenon why the state of a photon is simply affected by being consciously observed. A fact that has been proven in many quantum experiments. It is conceivable that, in the state of observation, we communicate with the photon we have just observed by means of our biophotons. As a result, similar to a quantum entanglement, the other particle would then be influenced. In the model outlined here, light could be a unitary "substance" that is distributed throughout our universe, and is affected by every "particle of light" it is built of.

 

[zak]

Hi Jean d'arc, thanks for the translation of this very interesting article.
I read your post the day when it was posted, and i found it rather "bright".
The same day i tried to dig this information, and i found nothing special, and in "a sort of thing" i passed to other stuffs.
Until i fell on an article on SOTT Spanish talking about the topic.
I am going to put here the translation, but before that, in following a link from your article in german
there is this one:

There Are Biophotons in the Brain. Is Something Light-Based Going On?


September 14, 2017

by Robby Berman

Over the last 100 years, scientists have realized, first in rats, that neurons in mammalian brains were capable of producing photons, or "biophotons." The photons appear, though faintly, within the visible spectrum, running from near-infrared through violet, or between 200 and 1,300 nanometers. The question is why?

In biology, of course, “why” is an iffy question that presupposes intent, that is, some conscious designer at work. In fact, many traits just are, due to random mutation, and have simply never been selected out. It’s unknown so far if biophotons just are. But scientists have some exciting suspicions, and a recently published paper asks a tantalizing question: Are there optical communication channels in the brain? If the answer is yes, what’s being communicated? The very notion opens the conversation to a whole other level of operation in the brain that could even be on a previously undiscovered entangled quantum level.

The team wanted to know whether or not there existed an infrastructure over which light could travel from one place to another in the brain across the distances required, focusing on myelinated axons. Axons are the fibers that carry a neuron’s electrical signal outward; myelinated axons are covered in myelin, a fatty substance that electrically insulates the axon.

Biophotons can travel away from the neuron or back up toward the hillock. (WIKIPEDIA)

They modeled such axons, doing computations on how light would behave as the fibers bent, lost or gained thickness in their biophoton-absorbing myelin coating, or how they’d behave when crossing each other. The team concluded that light conduction across myelinated axons is feasible.

What happens to photon transmission when an axon bends (ZARKESHIAN, ET AL)

The axons could pass between 46% and 96% of the light they receive over a distance of 2 millimeters, the average length of a human brain’s axons, the percentage depending on bending, sheath thickness, etc. They also worked out that, though rat brains can pass just one biophoton per neuron a minute, human brains, with many more neurons, could convey more than a billion biophotons per second. All together, the researchers conclude, “This mechanism appears to be sufficient to facilitate transmission of a large number of bits of information, or even allow the creation of a large amount of quantum entanglement.” So there's what could act as an entire network for light-based communication in place. But we don’t know what, if anything, it’s doing. The researchers proposed a set of in vitro and in vivo experiments for others to perform that could confirm their findings.

Meanwhile, did they say “entanglement?” Given the presence here of photons, the possibility has to cross one’s mind, since they go hand in hand, as it were, with entanglement. In the paper, the scientists are intrigued in particular with the interactions between photons and nuclear spins — the way nuclei turn causes different chemical effects — and how that affects things like magnetoreception in animals.

magnetic earth
Earth’s magnetic field (TERRENCE SABAKA ET AL/NASA GSFC)

Given that there’s some distance between the biophotons and nuclear spins, the scientists wonder if there’s entanglement involved, saying, “for individual quantum communication links to form a larger quantum network with an associated entanglement process involving many distant spins, the nuclear spins interfacing with different axons must interact coherently. This, most likely, requires close enough contact between the interacting spins. The involvement of synaptic junctions between individual axons may provide such a proximity mechanism.” And since some people think entanglement could be behind whatever process it is that produces consciousness, well, where is this going to lead?

-----------------------

And the Spanish translation now:

They discover the possible origin of consciousness in the brain

Canadian researchers have discovered that the human brain is capable of transmitting information through light. It can produce more than 1 billion biophotons per second, a volume sufficient to transmit a large number of bits of information, and generate quantum processes capable, hypothetically, of generating consciousness.

Despite great advances in neuroscience, there are still fundamental unanswered questions about the brain, including the origin of subjective experience and consciousness.

According to researchers at the University of Calgary in Canada, some answers to these questions may depend on new physical mechanisms, as they explain in an article published in Arxiv.

They are based on the fact that for 100 years now, biophotons, i. e. biologically produced photons, have been known to exist in the brain, i. e. photons that are not the result of the products of a specific enzyme reaction. The wavelength of these biophotons is between 200 and 1,300 nanometers, so a large part of their spectrum corresponds to the strip visible by the human eye.

What these researchers have done is to explore whether neurons use photonic communication to exchange information, in addition to the known electrochemical signals. Neurons communicate with each other through the small spaces between them, in a process known as synaptic transmission based on electrochemical signals.

The photonic communication between neurons, which is still hypothetical for science, opens a new dimension to the cerebral mechanisms that allow us to illuminate subjective experience and consciousness, mechanisms that are still largely unknown.

According to this new research, axons covered in myelin could serve as guides for photonic waves transmitting information between neurons. This possibility has been proven by modelling light transmission through these myelin-covered axons.

The axon is an extension of neurons specialized in conducting nerve impulses from the cellular body or soma to another cell. Myelin is a multilaminar structure formed by plasma membranes surrounding the axons. It forms a thick layer around the neural axons that allows transmission of nerve impulses over relatively long distances thanks to its insulating effect.

Information with light is feasible

In the modelling of these axons, the researchers performed different calculations on how light would behave in the process of transmitting information by means of biophotons and concluded that the conduction of light through axons covered in myelin is feasible.

They found that axons two millimeters long, the average length of the axons of the brain, can transmit between 46% and 96% of the biophotons they receive. They have also calculated the volume of data that could be transmitted through this system.

They point out that, if the brain of a rat generates one photon per neuron per minute, considering that there are ten elevated to eleven neurons in the human brain, it can be concluded that the human brain could produce more than 1,000 million biophotons per second.

For researchers, this volume is more than enough to facilitate the transmission of a large number of bits containing information, and even to allow the creation of a huge amount of quantum interlacing.

These quantum entanglement would allow the instantaneous connection between neurons, even though they are physically separated from each other and without any physical channel of communication between them, much faster than electrochemical channels of communication between neurons known so far.

The researchers warn that these calculations are approximate and have numerous uncertainties, since the optical properties of myelin are not yet known because no one has measured them.

They also warn that biophotons can spread in any direction, leaving more uncertainty about their hypothetical ability to transmit information in the right direction.

More questions than answers

At the moment, this research has more questions than answers, the researchers say. The first is, if they really exist, what does the brain use these optical communication channels for?

These authors suggest that brain biophotons may be associated with quantum processes related to the origin of consciousness, although they caution that quantum communication needs more than the optical communication channels they have discovered in a model.

In addition, although light-sensitive molecules may exist in the brain, there is no record that they are actually light-sensitive or act as quantum processors. To advance this line of research, scientists propose to analyze the optical properties of brain tissue through a series of specific experiments.

This work opens up a new field of research for quantum biology, the branch of biology that studies processes that take place in living beings and are based on characteristic effects of quantum mechanics, such as the superimposition of states, quantum coherence or quantum effect.

https://es.sott.net/article/57286-Descubren-el-posible-origen-de-la-consciencia-en-el-cerebro

A larger view on the provided link, but before:

What Are Myelinated Axons?


Myelinated axons are a portion of a neuron, or nerve cell, that is encapsulated by a fatty layer called the myelin sheath. Much like the rubber coating on an electrical cord, the myelin sheath insulates and protects the axon of the nerve cell as well as conducts the electrical impulse along the nerve. Nerves are made up of a network of neurons, specialized cells that send electrical signals either from the central nervous system—the brain and spinal cord — to the muscles or from the body’s various tissues back to the central nervous system. Myelinated axons conduct these signals from nerve cell to nerve cell along this pathway, ensuring that the message quickly gets where it needs to go.

A single neuron is made up of a cell body known as the soma, which contains the nucleus of the nerve cell, as well as the axon, which is like a tail or cord stretching from the soma to the soma of the next neuron. At the end of the axon are small branches called axon terminals. These connect to similar branches protruding from the soma of the subsequent neuron known as dendrites. The axon is long and skinny and acts like a kind of cellular electrical cord that plugs into the dendrites of the next cell.



Like any electrical cord, the conducting material within must be enclosed by an outer layer. The rubber encapsulating an electrical cord serves to protect the wire as well as move the electrical current along so that it cannot transfer to other surfaces with which it comes into contact. Similarly, myelinated axons are those that are protected by a layer of myelin known as the myelin sheath, 40 percent of which is made from water, 42 to 51 percent from fats, and nine to 18 percent from proteins.

Beginning in the womb as the fetus is still growing, the formation of myelinated axons occurs all the way into adolescence. In peripheral neurons, nerve cells making up the nerves found between the spinal cord and the body’s tissues, myelin is produced by support cells along the axon known as Schwann cells. Brain and spinal cord neurons, on the other hand, produce myelin by way of oligodendrocytes. Oligodendrocytes throw out cellular projections known as processes that encircle the axon to form the myelin sheath.

Both of these cell types serve the same function: to create an insulating layer around the axon that enhances the conductive potential of the neuron. In other words, myelinated axons can deliver the nervous system impulse quickly from cell to cell because the myelin itself as well as the solution in which nerve cells are suspended are highly effective conducting materials. Additionally, by encasing the axon much like the wire enclosed in an electrical cord, the myelin sheath prevents the electrical signal from escaping and thereby transferring to other cells, ensuring that it stays its course on its way to or from the central nervous system.

-http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-myelinated-axons.htm#

Also:

What is the difference between myelinated and unmyelinated axons?
besides the fact one doesn't have a myelin sheath

Answer:
Electrical potentials travel faster on myelinated axons than on unmyelinated ones.

Explanation:
Myelin is an electrical insulator, which does not allow to conduct electricity. In our body, we have both myelinated and unmyelinated axons (parts of the nerve system). Myelinated axons are created by the Schwann cells and the oligodendrocytes.

In unmyelinated axons, the electrical signal travels as a continuous wave, but in the unmyelinated axons, there are these insulators which prevent that from happening at all the positions. This causes the signal to "hop". The parts in between the insulators are called the nodes of Ranvier. The difference can clearly be seen in the image below. The action potentials will hop from one node of Ranvier to the following node.

Therefore, electrical potentials travel faster on myelinated axons than on unmyelinated ones. This is showed below, in which the relative travel speed of the potential is showed between unmyelinated (left) and myelinated (right).

https://socratic.org/questions/what-is-the-difference-between-myelinated-and-unmyelinated-axons


Finally the provided link from arXiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.08887.pdf

we have discussed how light conduction in a myelinated axon is feasible even in the presence
of realistic imperfections in the neuron. We have also described future experiments that could validate or falsify this model of
biophoton transmission (40). It is also worth addressing a few related questions. It is of interest to identify possible interaction
mechanisms between biophotons and nuclear spins within the framework of quantum communication. Spin chemistry research
(87) determined effects whereby electron and nuclear spins affect chemical reactions. These effects can also involve photons. In
particular, a class of cryptochrome proteins can be photo-activated resulting in the production of a pair of radicals per event, with
correlated electronic spins. This effect has been hypothesized to explain bird magnetoreception (49). It has been recently shown
by theoretical considerations that interactions between electron and nuclear spins in cryptochromes are of critical importance to
the elucidation of the precision of magnetoreception effects (50). Importantly for this topic, cryptochrome complexes are found in
the eyes of mammals and they are also magnetosensitive at the molecular level (88). Therefore, if similar proteins can be found
in the inner regions of the human brain, this could provide the required interface between biophotons and nuclear spins. However,
for individual quantum communication links to form a larger quantum network with an associated entanglement process involving
many distant spins, the nuclear spins interfacing with different axons must interact coherently. This, most likely, requires close
enough contact between the interacting spins. The involvement of synaptic junctions between individual axons may provide such a
proximity mechanism.
We should also address the question of the potential relevance of optical communication between neurons with respect
to consciousness and the binding problem. A specific anatomical question that arises is whether brain regions implicated in con-
sciousness (89) (e.g. claustrum (90, 91), the thalamus, hypothalamus and amygdala (92), or the posterior cerebral cortex (89)) have
myelinated axons with sufficient diameter to allow light transmission.
A major role of the myelin sheath as an optical waveguide could provide a better understanding of the causes of the various diseases associated with it (e.g. multiple sclerosis (93)) and hence lead to a design and implementation of novel therapies for these pathologies.
Let us note that, following Ref. (40), we have focused our discussion here on guidance by myelinated axons. However,
light guidance by unmyelinated axons is also a possibility, as discussed in more detail in the supplementary information of Ref.
(40).
Finally, with the advantages optical communication provides in terms of precision and speed, it is indeed a wonder why
biological evolution would not fully exploit this modality. On the other hand, if optical communication involving axons is har-
nessed by the brain, this would reveal a remarkable, hitherto unknown new aspect of the brains functioning, with potential impacts
on unraveling fundamental issues of neuroscience

40. S Kumar, K Boone, J Tuszynski, P Barclay and C Simon: Possible existence of optical communication channels in the brain.
Sci Rep
6, 36508 (2016)