Quantum-Inspired and Non-Classical Approaches to Consciousness: Models, Evidence and Constraints
Preprints.org March 4, 2026 Oscar Arias-Carrión, Emmanuel Ortega‐Robles, Manjarrez Elias preprint
Consciousness presents a structural puzzle: a unified, context-sensitive, globally integrated mode of experience emerging from distributed neural dynamics. This review examines whether quantum principles offer explanatory leverage as formal mathematical frameworks for modeling contextual cognition and as mechanistic hypotheses proposing biologically instantiated non-classical states. It surveys 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. The decisive question is whether brain dynamics exceed the explanatory reach of rigorously defined classical models.