{"id":245912,"date":"2026-10-24T21:05:53","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T02:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/quantum-physics-in-neuroscience-and-psychology-a-neurophysical-model-of-mind-brain-interaction"},"modified":"2026-10-24T21:05:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T02:05:53","slug":"quantum-physics-in-neuroscience-and-psychology-a-neurophysical-model-of-mind-brain-interaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/quantum-physics-in-neuroscience-and-psychology-a-neurophysical-model-of-mind-brain-interaction","title":{"rendered":"Quantum physics in neuroscience and psychology: a neurophysical model of mind\u2013brain interaction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that there is at least one type of information processing and manipulation that does not readily lend itself to explanations that assume that all final causes are subsumed within brain, or more generally, central nervous system mechanisms. The cases in question are those in which the conscious act of wilfully altering the mode by which experiential information is processed itself changes, in systematic ways, the cerebral mechanisms used. There is a growing recognition of the theoretical importance of applying experimental paradigms that use directed mental effort to produce systematic and predictable changes in brain function (e.g. Beauregard et al<\/em>. 2001<\/a>; Ochsner et al<\/em>. 2002<\/a>). These wilfully induced brain changes are generally accomplished through training in, and the applied use of, cognitive reattribution and the attentional re-contextualization of conscious experience. Furthermore, an accelerating number of studies in the neuroimaging literature significantly support the thesis that, again, with appropriate training and effort, people can systematically alter neural circuitry associated with a variety of mental and physical states that are frankly pathological (Schwartz et al<\/em>. 1996<\/a>; Schwartz 1998<\/a>; Musso et al<\/em>. 1999<\/a>; Paquette et al<\/em>. 2003<\/a>). A recent review of this and the related neurological literature has coined the term \u2018self-directed neuroplasticity\u2019 to serve as a general description of the principle that focused training and effort can systematically alter cerebral function in a predictable and potentially therapeutic manner (Schwartz & Begley 2002<\/a>).<\/p>\n

From a theoretical perspective, perhaps the most important aspect of this line of research is the empirical support it provides for a new science-based way of conceptualizing the interface between mind\/consciousness and brain. Until recently, virtually all attempts to understand the functional activity of the brain have been based, at least implicitly, on some principles of classic physics that have been known to be fundamentally false for three-quarters of a century. According to the classic conception of the world, all causal connections between observables are explainable in terms of mechanical interactions between material realities. But this restriction on modes of causation is not fully maintained by the currently applied principles of physics, which consequently offer an alternative conceptual foundation for the scientific description and modelling of the causal structure of self-directed neuroplasticity.<\/p>\n

The advantages for neuroscience and neuropsychology of using the conceptual framework of contemporary<\/em> physics, as opposed to that of classic<\/em> physics, stem from five basic facts. First, terms such as \u2018feeling\u2019, \u2018knowing\u2019 and \u2018effort\u2019, because they are intrinsically mentalistic and experiential, cannot be described exclusively in terms of material structure. Second, to explain the observable properties of large physical systems that depend sensitively upon the behaviours of their atomic constituents, the founders of contemporary physical theory were led to introduce explicitly into the basic causal structure of physics<\/em> certain important choices made by human beings about how they will act. Third, within this altered conceptual framework these choices are described in mentalistic (i.e. psychological) language. Fourth, terminology of precisely this kind is critically necessary for the design and execution of the experiments in which the data demonstrating the core phenomena of self-directed neuroplasticity are acquired and described. Fifth, the injection of psychologically described choices on the part of human agents into the causal theoretical structure can be achieved for experiments in neuroscience by applying the same mathematical rules that were developed to account for the structure of phenomena in the realm of atomic science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that there is at least one type of information processing and manipulation that does not readily lend itself to explanations that assume that all final causes are subsumed within brain, or more generally, central nervous system mechanisms. The cases in question are those in which the conscious act of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,47,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-neuroscience","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}