Quantum-Inspired and Non-Classical Approaches to Consciousness: Models, Evidence and Constraints
Abstract
Consciousness presents a structural puzzle: a unified, context-sensitive, globally integrated mode of experience emerging from distributed neural dynamics. While classical neuroscience has mapped synaptic, oscillatory, and network-level mechanisms with increasing precision, debate persists as to whether classical formalisms fully capture the integrative and contextual features of conscious processing. This review examines whether quantum principles offer explanatory leverage in two distinct senses: as formal mathematical frameworks for modeling contextual cognition, and as mechanistic hypotheses proposing biologically instantiated non-classical states. We surveyed empirical and theoretical developments spanning zero-quantum-coherence in MRI signals, entanglement-structured learning paradigms, quantum-inspired computational models, and proposed neural substrates, including microtubules, nuclear spins, and photonic architectures. Although certain findings have been interpreted as consistent with a non-classical structure, no study to date has demonstrated entanglement, long-lived coherence, or collapse dynamics in neural tissue under operational criteria comparable to those used in controlled quantum systems. Replication remains limited, biological entanglement witnesses are not yet established, and nonlinear classical dynamics can reproduce many putative quantum signatures. Accordingly, the decisive question is not whether the brain is quantum, but whether its dynamics exceed…
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