Martin Picard’s Mitochondrial Theory of Mind

“…More broadly, in what he calls his “energetic view of life,” Picard posits that distinct energetic states exist for health and disease, and that mitochondria are the tiny transformers responsible for them. According to this view, the flow of electrons from food to oxygen in metabolism, as processed by mitochondria, is the most basic level of the experience of being alive.”

“..“If the energy stops flowing, there’s no more you,” Picard said. The genome may encode the proteins that support life, but if the energy flow required for their respective regulation and production is disrupted or absent, he said, “there’s no more consciousness, there’s no more emotion, there’s no more life.” Picard’s ideas connecting mitochondrial biology and energy to health and even consciousness are gaining momentum. But they are so new that they do not yet have a formal field of study. Picard aims to change that, and others are getting on board.”

“…Far from being just passive channels, then, the organelles are “pattern-generating units in the circuit,” Picard said, that convert raw current into meaningful signals. He hypothesizes that differences in these patterns may help to explain why some people are prone to certain mental states and conditions, or chronic disease. “It’s a very exciting hypothesis that [Picard is] promoting,” West said. “He’s trying to widen the lens and help us all to understand overarching principles of energy flow.” In doing so, he is also challenging long-held assumptions in medicine and biology that genes and proteins are the main drivers of health and disease. What if, Picard asks, the amount and nature of energy transformed by mitochondria is in fact at the center of the human experience?

“…As new findings accrued, Picard came to see brain function as shaped not only by molecules, neurons, and circuits, but also by how energy is transformed and patterned. In his view, our cognition, mood, and conscious experience reflect deeper energetic processes — down to the subcellular level. He even ventures that mitochondria could turn out to be a missing piece of the mind-body puzzle — the microscopic alchemists that coax thought out of matter, responsible for nothing less than “the materialization of consciousness into life.”

Via: https://haidut.me/?p=3082