"Measurement" by neuronal tunneling: Implications of Born's rule

L. Polley

Published 2005-04-12Version 1

A non-collapse scenario for ``conscious'' selection of a term from a superposition was proposed in quant-ph/0309166: thermally assisted tunneling of neuronal pore molecules. But ``observers'' consisting of only two neurons appear to be at odds with Born's rule. In the present paper, an observer is assumed to possess a large number of auxilliary properties irrelevant for the result of the measurement. Born's rule then reduces to postulating that, prior to the result becoming conscious, irrelevant properties are in an entangled state with maximum likelihood, in the sense that phase-equivalent entanglements cover a maximal fraction of the unit sphere (leading to equal-amplitude superpositions).