One of the biggest thrills of my life came one day when I got an email from Dr. Andras Pellionisz, whose work with Llinas on ‘tensor network theory’ inspired a generation of neuroscientists, including the Churchlands.

He wrote to tell me how delighted he was with my paper, “Are Perceptual Fields Quantum Fields?”

Pellionisz drew attention early on to the fractal character of dendritic trees.

He then moved on to genetics, where he argued that gene expression is not, as was dogmatically asserted, a one-way street from DNA –> organism, but rather a recursive process akin to the generation of fractals.

This latter work has recently found vindication in the recent discoveries that go under the rubric of ‘epigenetics.’ I am, of course, very happy for Andras, who has since become a friend and collaborator and who is now Director of Genome Informatics at Mitrionics in Silicon Valley.

Now, we learn of yet more recent work on ‘nanotrees,’ which result from crystalline ‘defects’ in nanowires and which exhibit both fractal characteristics and, in some cases, a spiral shape which suggests a kinship with the helical structure of DNA — an aperiodic crystal.

I wish I knew what all this means, but … It seems clear enough that we have here a direct path from the symmetries of quantum theory thru fractal crystals thru DNA and on up the ladder to fractal neurons — thus lending further plausibility to my thesis that ‘neural form follows quantum function.’

What’s also clear is that these developments open entire new vistas for R&D on medical applications by way of genetic therapies. (Kuh-ching!)