ArticleScientific reports2021
Entangled radicals may explain lithium effects on hyperactivity.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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15 citing papers in PubMed, 0 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Evidence for a possible quantum effect on the formation of lithium-doped amorphous calcium phosphate from solution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Isotope-specific lithium bioactivity - physiological reality or laboratory oddity?Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Review
- Testing the Conjecture That Quantum Processes Create Conscious Experience.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Effects of lithium isotopes on sodium/lithium co-transport and calcium efflux through the sodium/calcium/lithium exchanger in mitochondria.Frontiers in physiology · 2024Article
- Search for lithium isotope effects in neuronal HT22 cells.Biochemistry and biophysics reports · 2023Article
- Magnetic isotope effects: a potential testing ground for quantum biology.Frontiers in physiology · 2023Article
- Radical triads, not pairs, may explain effects of hypomagnetic fields on neurogenesis.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Magnetic field effects in biology from the perspective of the radical pair mechanism.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Review
- Radical pairs may explain reactive oxygen species-mediated effects of hypomagnetic field on neurogenesis.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Radical pairs may play a role in microtubule reorganization.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Radical pairs can explain magnetic field and lithium effects on the circadian clock.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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.
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