Uncertainty Domains Associatedwith Time Limited Perceptual Tasks: Fuzzy Overlaps or Quantum Entanglement?

Abstract

The current understanding of complexity in computer science is that it corresponds to how the amount of computational resources invested in solving a problem scales with the system size. On the contrary, in natural sciences, a complex system is such that its knowledge cannot be confined to a unique model, but it is stratified over different and mutually irreducible hierarchical levels, each one with its own rules and language [1].

In dealing with cognitive processes complexity arises already in the physical description of how external stimuli (light, sound, pressure, chemicals) are transformed into sensorial perceptions.

I call “neurophysics” the combination of neurodynamical events, whereby neurons are treated as nonlinear dynamical systems, and the peculiar spike synchronization strategy selected in course of the natural evolution as the optimal strategy to elaborate information into relevant cognitive processes. Already at this fundamental level, we come across a possible quantum limitation, here presented explicitly for the first time, which would forbid the brain operations to be fully simulated by a universal computing machine.