Notes from the first annual Quantum Biology Forum
This conference had everything: red light therapy, mitochondria, and a surprisingly long line for the women's restroom
It was an unseasonably hot April in Washington, DC, and I was eavesdropping in line for the bathrooms at the first annual Quantum Biology Forum. Three attendees were discussing an experiment that would have sounded like a bunch of crap to the self I had been just a few years before: researchers at the University of Utah had used near-infrared light on student football players to mitigate the effects of the concussive blows they take to the head.
The skull-rattlers that are part of the territory, even in college football, are not just a bit of sporty tussling. I’ll never forget how Willie D. Jones described the problem in IEEE Spectrum in 2007.
When they collide, the forces that thickly muscled behemoths such as the San Diego Chargers' Shawne ”Lights Out” Merriman exert on each other regularly exceed 100 times the force of gravity—the kind of jarring that passengers experience in a car crash. The result is roughly 230 000 concussions among professional, college, and youth football players each year. …
Four football players from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, in Blacksburg, Va., were monitored through 35 practices and 10 games. At least twice a game, the players took shots to the head with forces on the level of a car crash.
These repeated insults to the brain have been strongly linked to later developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a devastating degenerative brain disease. Chicago Bears defensive tackle Steve McMichael, for example, died of ALS, but an autopsy found he had CTE (which probably led to the ALS).
A lot of effort has gone into prevention, but there’s nothing you can do after the damage has been sustained.
Not with traditional means, anyway. But in Utah’s small, preliminary study, which consisted of regular sessions of infrared light shined at the brain through the skull, there was significant protection against inflammation in the players who used it over the course of the season:
For players on the placebo treatment, brain inflammation increased over the course of the season. Specifically, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans taken at the end of the season showed significantly more signs of inflammation than scans taken at the start of the season. But for players who used the device with an active red light, brain inflammation didn’t increase over the season.
Earlier that day at the Forum, another scientist, Mary Liebert, had presented her work showing the efficacy of a device she had built at the University of Sydney in Australia. It used red light to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s. Another researcher is working with light to improve the recovery process after stroke.
The forum had that “new conference feel”. Massive conferences in established disciplines like neuroscience — say, FENS or the Society for Neuroscience — are like Glastonbury. Each is a well-oiled machine managing the movements and expectations of their tens of thousands of attendees. The established acts attract groupies by the thousands and there are so many satellite stages with new talent, you barely know where to start. But you still know exactly what the story is, who the big breakout star is, what the huge new album drop is, where to be and when. A few small newcomers may surprise you but the headliners and the songs they sing will be familiar to the attendees.
Quantum biology, by contrast, is not an established discipline. It is just emerging out of the realm where people smirk at the two words occupying space next to each other. This was reflected in the forum’s indie vibe. The attendees here shared one stage — it didn’t matter if you were Martin Picard (a pretty big deal at Columbia University who studies mitochondrial function) or a guy who uses magnets for healing. Same stage, same short amount of time to present your findings, same small cluster of lunch tables to talk about them afterwards.
If you scoffed about the magnet guy, don’t be too hasty. Two years ago I asked a scientist to comment on a new paper in biophotonics, which is the branch of science that looks at the light all living creatures emit. He preferred not to comment, instead cautioning me to steer well clear, and enumerated some red flags. “It is off mainstream biology,” he said. His view, as far as I could tell, was the consensus.
Two years on, it is being taken seriously. Articles are starting to appear in the kinds of prestigious publications that wouldn’t have touched the stuff even a couple of years ago, including Scientific American. “Life,” wrote the authors of an article about your glowing brain,
generates its own light—and not just the bioluminescence of glowworms and lamp-headed anglerfish or the radiation produced by heat. In a phenomenon scientists refer to as ultraweak photon emissions (UPEs), living tissues emit a continuous stream of low-intensity light, or biophotons. Scientists think that this light comes from the biomolecular reactions that generate energy, which create photons as by-products. The more energy a tissue burns, the more light it gives off—which means, of our body’s tissues, our brain should glow brightest of all.
Light is just, well, in the air. In March, Nature ran an article on the surprising science of red light therapy. More stories are in the pipeline. The same is true for all three pillars of quantum biology — light, electricity and magnetismare starting to break containment.
Despite all the markers of increasing legitimacy, it’s all still very new. The biggest “new conference” tell was that the Quantum Biology Forum was still at least partly a therapy session. Red light therapy for neurological interventions, I overheard in the bathroom line, is still susceptible to assy questions from reviewers like “This can’t be a real effect. How does the light get through the skull?” Wryly, one of the women pressed her iPhone torchlight to her pointer finger and we all watched it glow red like ET phone home. Her companions rolled their eyes.
But you could tell something has changed. There are serious articles in serious publications. Quantum biology conferences are popping up like toadstools. Instead of being publication killers, obtuse reviewers are now just obstacles for an emerging science that is relentlessly gathering steam.
Over the next few days I’m going to publish a couple more posts about the forum. Stay tuned.
Photo credit: Thank you to Terry Vlisidis for this cool photo of the red light bulb, which I got from unsplash.