Knew we would have a quantum woo comment in the first 10 comments on this. Unless you can show a coherent quantum state at human body temp then please stop with this nonsense.
I read Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind when I was younger. It suggested quantum processes as a last ditch effort for a non-deterministic brain. At the time, I thought it was a fascinating prediction of how our minds might work and that reading it made me a smarter person.
I have since come to view it more as an interesting lesson in the pitfalls of hypothesis formation, popular non-fiction, and vanity.
Even so, as a layperson, it's entirely understandable to perk up whenever someone discovers 'tubules' in the brain, even if none of that sufficiently supports any of the collapse requirements of the Penrose/Hammeroff quantum microtubes.
Being of scientific mind, I keep in mind that scientific discoveries existed the whole time until they were discovered as well.
The research on what we can see and learn in the brain is remarkable in the last 10 years. fMRI alone is staggering.
Your question seems to be one of enough resolution. The brain continues to get more attention in greater and greater resolution.
There seems to me more research in the area which is encouraging too.
I don't get the feeling your'e really interested in it other than looking at where the research is occurring and building from where and how you want to see it. Time will tell either way.
There's nothing necessarily interesting about quantum effects in the brain. Hard drives and other parts of a computer use quantum effects too, but it doesn't make them quantum computers.
Penrose is just another person who thinks "quantum" means "magic".
Should be noted that none of these papers addresses computation via qubits in the neuronal tubes which is central to the OrchOR theory of quantum woo consciousness.
