Biophotons: A Mechanism Connecting Human Consciousness to Light

Despite the innovations of human intelligence and advancements in neuroscience, the origin of consciousness and subjective experience itself remains elusive and uncharted territory. Our knowledge of the mechanisms through which anesthesia functions, as well as the processes responsible for establishment of memory and conscious perception are rudimentary at best (25).

Because biophotons have been found in the brain and are hypothesized to be quintessential to neurological activity, scientists are exploring the possibility that neurons communicate via photonic emissions in addition to the classic electro-chemical signaling comprised of neural impulses and neurotransmitters (20). Biophotons are optimal candidates, as “They travel tens of millions of times faster than a typical electrical neural signal and are not prone to thermal noise at body temperature owing to their relatively high energies. It is conceivable that evolution might have found a way to utilize these precious high-energy resources for information transfer” (25).

Not only that, but axons, the projecting appendages of nerve cells that conduct electrical impulses away from the neuronal cell body, which are surrounded by an insulating fatty myelin sheath, may serve as waveguides for biophotons to travel between neurons (20). Myelin sheaths are created by specialized glial cells in the central nervous system known as oligodendrocytes, which lends credence to the idea of biophoton-mediated neural communication since another kind of glial cell called the Müller cell has been proven to guide light in mammalian eyes (30, 31).

Myelin sheaths rectify the problem of communication across spatially separated agents in the nervous system since the insulating property of myelin increases the propagation speed of action potentials (the electrical spikes that occur when a neuron sends information down its axon to another neuron)  (25). This theory is also supported by the observation that light conduction is enhanced along white matter tracts comprised of myelinated axons (32).

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