Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Zadeh-Haghighi, Hadi
• Simon, Christoph

Titel

Entangled radicals may explain lithium effects on hyperactivity

Ist Teil von

• Scientific reports, 2021-06, Vol.11 (1), p.12121-12121, Article 12121

Ort / Verlag

England: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• It is known that bipolar disorder and its lithium treatment involve the modulation of oxidative stress. Moreover, it has been observed that lithium's effects are isotope-dependent. Based on these findings, here we propose that lithium exerts its effects by influencing the recombination dynamics of a naturally occurring radical pair involving oxygen. We develop a simple model inspired by the radical-pair mechanism in cryptochrome in the context of avian magnetoreception and xenon-induced anesthesia. Our model reproduces the observed isotopic dependence in the lithium treatment of hyperactivity in rats. It predicts a magnetic-field dependence of the effectiveness of lithium, which provides one potential experimental test of our hypothesis. Our findings show that Nature might harness quantum entanglement for the brain's cognitive processes.