Is the increasingly common decline effect seen in mainstream sciences like medicine and biology a sign of wide-spread flaws across the research/publication continuum, or a harbinger of deeper structural shifts in our interface with nature? Are biological systems primed for nonlocal communication and sustained quantum entanglement, as the evidence from quantum biology and experimental parapsychology seems to suggest? This discussion reviews the current data and outlines several mind-matter modeling candidates, together with the promising research venues they open.
Is the increasingly common decline effect seen in mainstream sciences like medicine and biology a sign of wide-spread flaws across the research/publication continuum, or a harbinger of deeper structural shifts in our interface with nature? Are biological systems primed for nonlocal communication and sustained quantum entanglement, as the evidence from quantum biology and experimental parapsychology seems to suggest? This discussion reviews the current data and outlines several mind-matter modeling candidates, together with the promising research venues they open.
Overwhelming empirical evidence suggests that consciousness may be fundamentally linked to properties of physical systems. Quantum coherence in biological molecules, as well as entangled states of macroscopic objects such as brains, are important examples that support this notion. If we consider the quantum effects that seem most relevant to biology (e.g., coherence, entanglement, superposition), does it become feasible to identify general rules for observing biological function arising from processes associated with quantum mechanics? What implications would follow if a scientific theory were formulated to describe the interplay between brain functioning and quantum uncertainty? Such a framework will require additional postulates on the nature of quantum interactions in condensed phase systems. One challenge for present day theorists is whether and how classical and quantum mechanics may ultimately provide an integrated description of physics. This article will explore the issues related to quantum theory's ability to address mind-body phenomena and their connection to consciousness.
Scientific facts are constituted as consensus about observable phenomena against the background of an accepted, or at least plausible, theory. Empirical data without a theoretical framework are at best curiosities and anomalies, at worst they are neglected. The problem of parapsychological research since its inception with the foundation of the Society of Psychical Research in 1882 was that no sound theoretical basis existed. On the contrary, the proponents of the SPR often indulged in a theoretical model that ran contrary to the perceived materialism of mainstream science, and many tried to use the data of parapsychological research to bolster the case of “mind over matter,” yet without producing a good model of how such effects could be conceptualized. In general, parapsychological (PSI) research has been rather devoid of theorizing and, if anything, assumed a tacit signaltheoretical, local-causal model of some sort of subtle energy that would be vindicated, once enough empirical data were amassed. History, and data, proved this stance wrong. We will present a theoretical approach that challenges this local-causal, signal-theoretical approach by proposing that parapsychological phenomena are instances of a larger class of phenomena that are examples of nonlocal correlations. These are predicted by Generalized Quantum Theory (GQT) and can be expected to occur, whenever global descriptions of a system are complementary to or incompatible with local descriptions of elements of such a system. We will analyze the standard paradigms of PSI-research along those lines and describe how they can be reconceptualized as instances of such generalized nonlocal correlations. A direct consequence of this conceptual framework is that misrepresentations of these phenomena as local causes, as is done in direct experimentation, is bound to fail long-term. Strategies to escape this problem are discussed. Journal of Scientifi c Exploration, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 605–631, 2014 0892-3310/14 606 Harald Walach, Walter von Lucadou, and Hartmann Romer
There is always a deep distrust in some (including this writer) when a 'model' is presented to explain observations in the field of Energy Medicine. Many physical models are freely floated by researchers, who have observed psi, distant healing and related phenomena. Quantum consciousness, scalar wave effects, non-local effects and, not the least, entanglement in biosystems. Many physicists have criticized-and justifiably so-the inappropriateness of such modeling. Presently, too little is known about healing and psi for modeling. Should we contemplate modeling at all?
The question of whether quantum mechanical phenomena play a functional role in brain activity and the emergence of consciousness remains one of the most controversial yet intellectually stimulating debates at the intersection of physics, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. This review systematically examines the principal theoretical frameworks proposing quantum-level mechanisms in neural computation, including the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) hypothesis by Penrose and Hameroff, the quantum brain hypothesis of Stapp, quantum coherence models in microtubules, and quantum field theories of consciousness. We critically evaluate the current state of empirical evidence—including recent quantum biology findings, the challenge of decoherence in warm, biological systems, and experimental observations of quantum effects in biological systems—alongside computational models that bridge quantum formalism and neural network dynamics. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of quantum cognition models for understanding perception, decision-making, and memory. Despite significant scientific skepticism, emerging evidence from quantum biology and advanced neuroimaging technologies provides tentative support for quantum processes in neural substrates. We conclude by identifying critical gaps in current knowledge and outlining future research directions that may resolve the debate, including proposals for experimental paradigms using quantum sensing technologies applied to neural tissue. This review aims to serve as a foundational reference for researchers across disciplines approaching the quantum mind hypothesis with scientific rigor.
BACKGROUND: Quantum biology has shown that selected biological processes depend on quantum effects, including coherence, tunnelling, and spin-dependent reactions. In parallel, quantum imaging now uses entangled photons to extract biological information at low photon flux. Early evidence that biological tissue can alter photon entanglement in disease-associated ways raises a translational question: whether decoherence itself can become a diagnostic signal. RATIONALE: Addiction is a disorder of reward-circuit function in which current imaging can define anatomy and network activity but cannot resolve molecular-scale information processing in affected tissue. This review asks whether emerging quantum-biological and entangled-photon approaches could, in the long term, provide a new way to interrogate addiction-relevant neural states. CONTENT: This structured narrative review, informed by SANRA criteria and conducted across seven databases, synthesises evidence across five domains: quantum biology, entangled-photon imaging, decoherence-based tissue discrimination, addiction neuroscience, and quantum-theranostic concepts. Evidence supports quantum effects in selected living systems, with the strongest support for enzymatic tunnelling and more qualified evidence for radical-pair magnetoreception. The photosynthetic case, once the field's flagship, remains contested. Quantum imaging has demonstrated low-light biological imaging and proof-of-concept disease discrimination in ex vivo tissue through entanglement-decoherence signatures. No evidence currently demonstrates a decoherence signature of addiction or supports clinical quantum theranostics. CONCLUSION: This review proposes a falsifiable translational hypothesis that remains to be established empirically: disease-associated decoherence signatures may represent a biological information channel, with reward-circuitry disorders such as addiction providing a clinically meaningful future test case. A staged research programme is outlined, progressing from ex vivo replication to living neural preparations, physical feasibility testing, addiction-relevant models, and only then to therapeutic perturbation.