Why are receptors drug targets in the central and peripheral nervous systems [CNS and PNS]? Why are ion channels also targets?
Quantum Neuroscience
Google recently [July 23, 2025] closed an academic research award call to investigate Quantum neuroscience. Google Research wrote: “Could quantum phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, play a role in neural processes, such as synaptic transmission, and cognitive functions like perception or decision-making? However, over the last decade, experimental evidence emerged suggesting that quantum effects may indeed play a role in biology, and brain function in particular.”
“Quantum biological phenomena in enzyme catalysis, photosynthesis, and avian magnetoreception are the most established examples, while demonstrating quantum effects in processes such as olfaction and anesthetics is still an area of active investigation. A key challenge is to demonstrate that quantum effects are not merely present, but play a functional role in neural processes, beyond what can be explained by classical mechanisms. Such research is not only interesting for its potential to revolutionize our understanding of the brain, but also for its potential applications when combined with quantum computing, quantum sensing, and transduction between them.”
Google is a computing company, and it is within its business interests to research quantum science. However, when it comes to neuroscience and consciousness, Google is not just unobservant; they do not have the quality to make a difference. What are the biggest challenges in neuroscience to date? Mental disorders [psychiatry] and brain disorders [neurology]. When medications for psychiatry are to be developed, what are the most common targets sought? Whatever those targets, what do they induce or inhibit? Ions and molecules. Ions through ion channels, molecules, mostly neurotransmitters, through receptors, and so forth. In neurotechnology, with probes, electrical signals [ions] are the targets.
In neurology, there is intense research on the blood-brain barrier. There are efforts in neurodegenerative disorders, and so on. What must be affected for something to be wrong with the brain? Neurons — especially their ability to participate in clusters — as part of [being] collective bridges for ions [electrical signals] and molecules [chemical signals], to mechanize functions and to make their way, conceptually.
So far, with all the empirical evidence in neuroscience, for those paying serious attention, neurons [and their signals] are directly implicated in all functions. So, say a corporation wants to really make a difference in psychiatry and neurology, what should the focus be, directly at this point? Ions and molecules. How are they responsible for functions? How do they configure what is called memory, feelings, emotions, and the regulation of internal senses? What happens to them that may result in some neurological disorders? How can they be conceptually explored first, then mapped to functions?
You can seek out quantum effects in the brain or anything else. But you’d have to rule out ions and molecules for functions. Or, you can decide to explain ions and molecules in relation to quantum effects. However, you may still remove the relation to quantum and still have your explanation. So, it is not a quantum problem. Psychiatry and neurology are serious enough to mean that efforts should be made to seek out answers against unknowns. It is not vibe science of leaving those out, so go in this direction and have fun, excluding major solutions and applications in direct and urgent need.
Google mentioned cognitive functions like perception or decision-making. Those terms have nothing to do with neuroscience, exposing their absolute loss of basic insight in the field. In the brain, information is organized, and information is transported. In the PNS, information gets in, then terminates [with interpretation] at some brain locations in the CNS. So, there is transport, and there is a location or destination.
What is this transport? What are the locations that these transports terminate at? Why? What does this mean for what is labeled as decision-making? What does it mean for what is labeled as perception? How do these define disconnection from reality? How do they explain the loss of functions when something goes wrong in a part of the brain?
Neuroscience does not have a quantum problem at all. Therefore, seeking quantum answers is neuroscience-washing. If someone is having addiction problems, no one cares about quantum superposition or entanglement. If there is a serious side effect of an antipsychotic, no one is trying to qubit and chill. None of the applications submitted to Google or would be approved by Google in their research awards would move knowledge forward in psychiatry and neurology. Nothing Google is doing now, in any capacity, would move knowledge forward in psychiatry and neurology. If there is a lack of understanding at the basic level, all that’s left is noise, including this quantum satire.
Connectomics
Google is also mapping the brain in what is called connectome research. For what it is worth, there is no progress, with respect to applications in psychiatry and neurology that Google would make, that is beyond using a microscope to identify that neurons are responsible for functions, done around a hundred and thirty years ago in Europe.
Yes, the brain has wires. There are new types of cells. There are several kinds of connections and so forth. So, what else? How does that explain the heaviness in a depression or the serious unease in an anxiety episode? Even the most recognized protein structures researched by Google has no promise to solve the side effects of medications, which is a serious problem in psychiatry. It will not be enough to discover new molecules, but how can the side effects be solved?
Consciousness
Consciousness is within the electrical and chemical signals of neurons in clusters. Consciousness is not neural correlates or microtubules, or quantum superposition-entanglement, or information integration phi, or global workspace or panpsychism, or prediction or controlled hallucination or moral patienthood or computational functionalism, or qualia or whatever other slop exists in consciousness. Articles that are looking for other answers aside from those with evidence in neuroscience are slop articles.
There is a new [July 22, 2025] consciousness-slop article in Scientific American, Your Chatbot Says It Might Be Conscious. Should You Believe It?, stating that, “Can a computational system become conscious? If artificial intelligence systems such as large language models (LLMs) have any self-awareness, what could they feel? LLMs have rapidly grown far more complex and can now do analytical tasks that were unfathomable even a year ago. These advances partly stem from how LLMs are built.”
“When engineers create LLMs, they choose immense datasets—the system’s seeds—and define training goals. But once training begins, the system’s algorithms grow on their own through trial and error. They can self-organize more than a trillion internal connections, adjusting automatically via the mathematical optimization coded into the algorithms, like vines seeking sunlight. And even though researchers give feedback when a system responds correctly or incorrectly—like a gardener pruning and tying plants to trellises—the internal mechanisms by which the LLM arrives at answers often remain invisible.”
All these stories and descriptions, like everything else in the no-value writing, do not ask the important question: what is the difference between how the brain processes language and how the brain processes feelings? If someone is cold, or someone is speaking or listening, what is the difference in brain mechanisms? Can language be conscious? Sometimes people with locked-in syndrome can hear and respond somehow, even if they cannot feel.
So, if language — speaking, listening, writing, reading, signing, and signing — can be conscious in a dynamic way, if machines have those similar to humans, is there no possibility to develop a measure for just that function, as a fraction of a total?
Conceptually, electrical signals and chemical signals are responsible for language, like they are responsible for feelings. Both signals interact; the interactions result in functions, and the states they have when interacting grade the functions. Subjectivity [as a label] is a grader or an attribute of interactions. It is similar to attention, intense, and so on. Is AI similar for language [as a function] and some attributes?
Animals too can be explored for sentience with electrical and chemical signals towards better welfare. Those without signals can be sought for functions and attributes. The easy and hard problem of consciousness is a separation that assumes that easy problems were explained, but not the hard problem, when none of the easy or hard problem descriptions can say anything useful for psychiatry and neurology. Also, there is no function [for human life and experiences] in the brain without electrical and chemical signals as direct configurators. So, easy and hard problem is an awry characterization. Consciousness is not a philosophical problem. Philosophy of mind, at this point, is remote from evidence in brain science.
Google is trying to hype quantum computing with its latest science awards. It will only find grifters. Also, neuroscience will not help the case of quantum computing, whatever the challenges. Another waste.
This article was written for WHN by David Stephen, who currently does research in conceptual brain science with a focus on the electrical and chemical configurators for how they mechanize the human mind with implications for mental health, disorders, neurotechnology, consciousness, learning, artificial intelligence, and nurture. He was a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL. He did computer vision research at Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona.
As with anything you read on the internet, this article should not be construed as medical advice; please talk to your doctor or primary care provider before changing your wellness routine. WHN neither agrees nor disagrees with any of the materials posted. This article is not intended to provide a medical diagnosis, recommendation, treatment, or endorsement.
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