Phillise Todd

While the origin of consciousness remains an active area of research and debate, voltage changes within cells are agreed to be a fundamental indicator of memory and thought. While well understood in neural networks as action potentials, recent findings in embryonic development from Levin reveal that cells differentiate their voltage in correspondence to their eventual function. This raises the question of where such voltage information originates, since the genome of each cell lacks an anatomical blueprint for the organism as a whole. Vacuum Orchestrated Spin Signalling (VOSS) is a theory of nonlocal consciousness that posits the information processing of thoughts originates from the quantum vacuum and is preserved as memory within it. Research in relativistic quantum information (RQI) suggests the quantum vacuum is an infinitely entangled field of information, which can be harvested to entangle spacelike separated quantum antennas between whom light signalling is impossible. VOSS suggests the entangled electron spins of magnetically sensitive radical pairs act as cellular quantum antennas, receiving conscious thoughts from the vacuum. The radical pair mechanism is implicated in the mediation of consciousness, not only through their apparent control of ligand-gated ion channels, which change cellular voltage, but also through their ability to explain the isotope-dependent efficacy of general anesthetics. VOSS proposes that thoughts are signalled to radical pair spins via quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. Agential thought would thus be defined as a deviation from the expectation values predicted by Born rule probability distributions of otherwise random virtual photon fluctuations. Here a mathematical framework is presented to model the minimum strength oscillating magnetic fields of virtual photons would need to sufficiently alter radical pair reaction yields and induce a cellular voltage change. The Unruh-DeWitt detector model is adapted from RQI to describe how a radical pair could couple with the quantum vacuum and thereby establish a baseline of interaction from which a signal of agential deviations might be detected. While most theories of consciousness presume cellular networks create thoughts, VOSS explores the inverse possibility that thoughts control cellular networks, or more specifically, that the mind can perturb quantum systems under certain conditions and constraints. Experimental support for this view is highlighted from Freedman et al. (2024) in their third replication of the a priori hypothesis that focused thought significantly alters the timing of electron quantum tunneling events when psy inhibitory neurological functions are suppressed (p = 0.006, effect size 0.38).

Phillise Tiffeny Todd received her PhD in physics from the University of California, Irvine in 2016, where she conducted theoretical research in quantum biology on the radical pair mechanism of avian magnetoreception.  She presented her work at The Science of Consciousness in 2022 and 2024.  Currently, she serves an Associate Professor of Physics at Pierce College in Lakewood, Washington, USA.