Quantum Statistical Brain

Abstract

This article was originally inspired by the findings of Li et al, which can be summarized as follows. Humans know the uncertainty of their working memory and use it to make decisions; the content and the uncertainty of working memory can be decoded from BOLD signals; decoding errors predict memory errors at the single-trial level; decoded uncertainty correlates with behavioral reports of working memory uncertainty. Later I learned about the findings of Manassi and Whitney about the stability illusion of perceptions making the world look smoothly changing and effectively shifting the perception towards the past. It is not too surprising that the states of feature detector neurons obey a statistical distribution. It is however not obvious that the reliability of the memory should correlate with the width of this distribution and that even the subjective estimate for the reliability should reflect this width. If one accepts the notion of a quantum brain, the distribution of features could reflect the non-determinism of the outcome in the reduction of entanglement quantum measurements producing sensations. Zero energy ontology (ZEO) leads to the notion of 4-D brain and suggests that the feature ensemble is not spatial, as it should be in standard quantum theory, but a temporal ensemble formed by the memory mental images of the feature. Quite generally, in ZEO sequences of "small" state function reductions (SSFRs) as counterparts of so called weak measurements would form temporal ensembles of memory mental images so that the connection with short term memory would be direct. This picture explains the findings of both Li et al and Manassi and Whitney.