Are there optical communication channels in the brain?

Abstract

Despite great progress in neuroscience, there are still fundamental unanswered questions about the brain, including the origin of subjective experience and consciousness. Some answers might rely on new physical mechanisms. Given that biophotons have been discovered in the brain, it is interesting to explore if neurons use photonic communication in addition to the well-studied electro-chemical signals. Such photonic communication in the brain would require waveguides. Here we review recent work [S. Kumar, K. Boone, J. Tuszynski, P. Barclay, and C. Simon, Scientific Reports 6, 36508 (2016)] suggesting that myelinated axons could serve as photonic waveguides. The light transmission in the myelinated axon was modeled, taking into account its realistic imperfections, and experiments were proposed both in-vivo and in-vitro to test this hypothesis. Potential implications for quantum biology are discussed.