Is the Brain a Quantum Computer?

I don't feel papers like this are really adding much to the community. Of course all explanations of consciousness go against our conventional understanding of the universe, that's why we don't understand consciousness yet. More likely than not, we just don't understand the universe as well as we thought we did. Bonus points to those who think different.

<a href="http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/documents/CogScipub.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/documents/CogScipub.pdf</a>

Law of Minimization of Mystery: consciousness is mysterious and quantum mechanics is mysterious, so maybe the two mysteries have a common source.

I was going to answer the title, with "no" - <a href="http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/brain.html" rel="nofollow">http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/brain.html</a> - but the article itself agrees with me anyway.<p>So. Your title is misleading &#38; not representative of the article, &#38; that's annoying.

The abstract makes it clear they argue "no":<p><i>We argue that computation via quantum mechanical processes is irrelevant to explaining how brains produce thought, contrary to the ongoing speculations of many theorists. First, quantum effects do not have the temporal properties required for neural information processing. Second, there are substantial physical obstacles to any organic instantiation of quantum computation. Third, there is no psychological evidence that such mental phenomena as consciousness and mathematical thinking require explanation via quantum theory. We conclude that understanding brain function is unlikely to require quantum computation or similar mechanisms.</i>

No