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Quantum-like dynamics in the human brain

Deco, G.; Sanz Perl, Y.; Greenstein, N.; Chandaria, S.; Scholes, G. D.; Kringelbach, M. L.

2025-10-03 neuroscience
10.1101/2025.10.02.680057 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Emerging new research indicates evidence of quantum-like (QL) probability laws, including interference effects, in non-quantum physical systems using coupled oscillators. This can produce QL states which can compute in a QL fashion. Given the success of using coupled oscillators for human whole-brain modelling, we investigate the possibility of QL dynamics in the human brain. Here, we investigate how the special topology of human brain anatomy together with QL bits can promote the rich dynamic repertoire necessary for human advanced cognition. We systematically changed the level of QL processing in a whole-brain model. We found the QL regime provided the best whole-brain model fit to large-scale human empirical neuroimaging data. Extraordinarily, at this optimum point we found significantly lower energy consumption than for the non-QL networks. Mechanistically, this implies that the significantly larger whole-brain spectral gap for QL networks offers a backbone to the functional metastability needed to provide the necessary dynamical regime for efficient computation. The underlying QL spectral gaps amplify through interference the metastability and richness of repertoire of the human brain. Overall, we found that the special topology of the human brain promotes QL information processing.

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