Searching for Quantum Effects in the Brain: A Bell-Type Test for Nonclassical Latent Representations in Autoencoders
This work addresses the fundamental problem of understanding the physics of neural computation for researchers in neuroscience and quantum information, offering a new experimental route to probe quantum-like signatures.
The authors tackled the question of whether neural information processing involves quantum-mechanical elements by proposing a model-agnostic, information-theoretic test for nonclassicality in neural representations, using autoencoders to apply a Bell-type consistency test in latent space to see if decoding statistics under multiple readout contexts can be explained by a classical distribution.
Whether neural information processing is entirely classical or involves quantum-mechanical elements remains an open question. Here we propose a model-agnostic, information-theoretic test of nonclassicality that bypasses microscopic assumptions and instead probes the structure of neural representations themselves. Using autoencoders as a transparent model system, we introduce a Bell-type consistency test in latent space, and ask whether decoding statistics obtained under multiple readout contexts can be jointly explained by a single positive latent-variable distribution. By shifting the search for quantum-like signatures in neural systems from microscopic dynamics to experimentally testable constraints on information processing, this work opens a new route for probing the fundamental physics of neural computation.