Perceptual Instability and the Generalized Quantum Theory

Despite the success story of scientific and, in particular, neuroscientific research to date, there are still no convincing answers to central questions about consciousness, free will or the mind-matter problem. Interesting in this context, however, are considerations that the physicist and Nobel Prize winner Wolfgang Pauli and the famous psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (e.g. Atmanspacher & Fuchs 2014) made together and which ultimately led Atmanspacher and colleagues to formulate the “Generalized Quantum Theory” (Atmanspacher et al. 2002). The Generalized Quantum Theory is a formal framework theory that allows the application of mathematical principles beyond physics and from which precise and empirically testable hypotheses can be derived. A very good overview article by Harald Atmanspacher can be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Atmanspacher 2020).

Atmanspacher and colleagues chose bistability of ambiguous figures as a model situation for this theory and developed the so-called Necker-Zeno Model for Bistable Perception, which is based on quantum theoretical considerations (Atmanspacher et al. 2004, 2008). The Necker-Zeno Model presents a relation of three observables from three different time scales that are frequently discussed in psychology and cognitive science. In recent years, we have found both psychophysical and electrophysiological empirical confirmation of this relation. In particular, the authors of the Necker-Zeno model postulate increased values on certain time scales in people with meditation experience, which we were able to confirm some time ago in an EEG study (Fig. 1 and Kornmeier et al., 2017).