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vacuum state
Also known as: vacuum state, vacuum states
Facts (11)
Sources
Quantum Approaches to Consciousness plato.stanford.edu Nov 30, 2004 6 facts
referenceRicciardi and Umezawa proposed in the 1960s that mental states, specifically memory states, can be treated in terms of vacuum states of quantum fields, an approach currently supported by Giuseppe Vitiello.
claimSpontaneous symmetry breaking occurs when the ground state (or vacuum state) of a system is not invariant under the full group of transformations providing the conservation laws for the system, which generates collective modes known as Nambu-Goldstone boson modes.
claimDissipation leads to finite lifetimes of vacuum states, representing temporally limited memory, and generates a genuine arrow of time for the system while inducing entanglement with the environment (Alfinito and Vitiello 2000; Alfinito et al. 2001).
referenceVitiello (1995) describes how the interaction of a system with its environment causes a doubling of the collective modes of the system, yielding infinitely many differently coded vacuum states and allowing for many memory contents without overprinting.
referenceRicciardi and Umezawa (1967) proposed using the formalism of quantum field theory to describe brain states, specifically focusing on memory as inequivalent representations of vacuum states in many-particle systems.
referenceAccording to Umezawa, coherent neuronal assemblies correlated to memory states are regarded as vacuum states, and their activation leads to excited states with a finite lifetime, enabling conscious recollection of the content encoded in the vacuum state.
Quantum Approaches to Consciousness plato.stanford.edu Nov 30, 2004 4 facts
claimStuart et al. (1978, 1979) investigated the stability of vacuum states and the role of external stimuli in the activation of neuronal assemblies.
claimGiuseppe Vitiello is a prominent current proponent of the theory that mental states are vacuum states of quantum fields.
claimDissipation leads to finite lifetimes of vacuum states, representing temporally limited memory, as demonstrated by Alfinito and Vitiello (2000) and Alfinito et al. (2001).
claimSpontaneous symmetry breaking in quantum field theory occurs when the ground state (or vacuum state) of a system is not invariant under the full group of transformations providing the conservation laws for the system.
Quantum Approaches to Consciousness plato.stanford.edu Nov 30, 2004 1 fact
claimThe quantum field theory approach to memory posits that memory states are represented as states of many-particle systems, specifically as inequivalent representations of vacuum states of quantum fields.