What does quantum physics really say about consciousness and healing?

What have experiments actually observed?

Take this step by step: what was observed, what people inferred, whether the evidence supports it, and what is unresolved.

Quantum physics grew out of experiments on atoms in the late 1800s and early 1900s that did not make sense in the older physics, as Caltech’s explainer recounts. Scientists found that matter and energy come in small packets, or quanta. Light of one frequency, for example, arrives in packets called photons.

Superposition. Caltech offers an analogy: two sets of ripples on a pond can overlap and combine. Likewise, an electron’s possible states can combine, so it can be described as being in more than one place at once. The analogy breaks down in one important way. Pond waves are made of water. Quantum waves are mathematical. They give the chances of finding the particle in each place or state.

Measurement and decoherence. When a particle in a blend is measured, one definite result appears. Caltech notes that what is often called “collapse” is more accurately called decoherence. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes decoherence as interactions between a system and its environment that suppress quantum interference.

Entanglement. Two particles can be linked so that measuring one tells you about the other, even far apart. In the 1930s, Einstein and others suggested the answers might be set in advance and simply hidden. Theoretical work by John Stewart Bell in the 1960s, and experiments by John Clauser and others starting in the 1970s, ruled out that kind of “local hidden variable” explanation. For the full story, see What Is Quantum Entanglement, and Why Did Einstein Call It Spooky? and Did Einstein lose his argument that God does not play dice?

Caltech says many quantum ideas are “difficult if not impossible” to picture, so the field depends on mathematics.

What have people inferred, and does the evidence support it?

Three popular leaps each start from something true.

“The observer is the mind.” An old, unorthodox view traces back to von Neumann in the 1930s. Wigner pushed it further in the 1960s, and Henry Stapp later defended it. It links conscious acts to the collapse of quantum states. The Stanford Encyclopedia says adding the observer’s mind to standard quantum physics is unorthodox and “highly speculative from a contemporary perspective.” Caltech is blunter. The word “observation” is misleading, it says, because it suggests consciousness is involved. “Measurement” describes it better: a change in outcome may come from an interaction with the environment, including the measuring device. So the claim that a watching mind creates reality is Not supported.

“Entanglement connects everything, so thoughts or healing can travel.” Entanglement is real and passes test after test. But Caltech notes that experiments show entangled particles are not signaling each other faster than light, and that quantum physics cannot be used to send faster-than-light messages. As Thomas Vidick puts it on Caltech’s page, “There can be correlation without communication.” See Can quantum entanglement send messages faster than light?

“Quantum products can heal.” The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) says products advertised as giving off negative ions, “scalar energy,” “quantum energy” or “quantum science” have been sold online for well over a decade, from pendants to pillows. Their ads promise things like better blood flow, protection of DNA and a stronger “biofield.” When government agencies and universities tested several of them, they found measurable amounts of uranium, thorium or radium. The whole-body dose is likely low, but wearing a pendant all the time can raise the dose to the skin. The NRC says it “cannot say whether these products work as advertised.” In December 2021, the Dutch radiation authority said ten products, including one sold as a “Quantum Pendant,” gave off low levels of ionizing radiation. It told owners to stop wearing them and told sellers that their sale was prohibited. The claim that such products heal through quantum physics is Not supported.

If the link between mind and body is what draws you, see Can meditation change the brain?

What is still unresolved about quantum effects and consciousness?

In the mid-1990s, Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff proposed Orch OR, short for “orchestrated objective reduction.” As their 2014 review explains, it says consciousness depends on coordinated quantum processes in microtubules inside brain cells. Each process ends in a physical collapse of the quantum state, following a rule proposed by Lajos Diósi and Penrose, and that collapse is taken to produce a moment of conscious awareness. Penrose argues that such a collapse needs new physics that joins quantum theory and gravity. Hameroff, whose background is in anesthesiology, suggested microtubules as a place where it could happen.

An influential objection came in 2000 from Max Tegmark. He calculated that quantum states in the brain would decohere in about 10⁻¹³ to 10⁻²⁰ seconds, while brain processes take about a thousandth to a tenth of a second. That is far too fast to matter, he argued, so the brain activity tied to thinking should be treated as an ordinary, non-quantum system. In 2002, Hameroff and two colleagues replied that Tegmark had modeled a different setup from theirs. Their corrected estimate was 10⁻⁵ to 10⁻⁴ seconds, and they argued that other effects could stretch it to a hundredth or a tenth of a second. The argument is not settled.

Experiments have started to test parts of the idea. In a test reported in 2020, a team that included Diósi himself used the Gran Sasso underground laboratory to measure the faint radiation that Penrose-style collapse should produce. Their result ruled out the natural, “parameter-free” version of the Diósi–Penrose model. This test did not rule out versions with a larger “size” setting. Another result is friendlier to the idea. In 2024, researchers at Wellesley College gave rats a drug that stabilizes microtubules. Under the anesthetic gas isoflurane, those rats took an average of 69 seconds longer to lose consciousness. The authors say this is what models of consciousness as a quantum state of microtubules predict. The experiment did not measure a quantum state, and the authors note that the result may also fit ordinary, non-quantum models of consciousness.

The Stanford Encyclopedia calls Orch OR the most speculative of the quantum-brain proposals it reviews. It also says the idea has inspired real experiments on anesthetics and microtubules, and that it “should neither be too quickly celebrated nor offhandedly dismissed.” We label Orch OR an Open question.

What is the strongest objection to this answer?

A thoughtful reader might ask: if physicists do not fully understand measurement, and nobody understands consciousness, how can anyone rule anything out? Parts of that are right. Caltech says a full understanding of how measurement relates to outcomes is still needed. The Stanford Encyclopedia’s entry on decoherence notes that decoherence alone does not solve the “measurement problem.” Its entry on quantum approaches to consciousness reports theoretical studies in which entanglement can last in hot, noisy systems under particular conditions.

But an open question is not evidence for a particular answer. Not knowing exactly how measurement works does not show that minds control it. Not knowing how the brain makes experience does not show that pendants heal. That is why the claims on this page get different labels. For the wider puzzle, see Is the mind just the brain? and our story What Is Consciousness?

What do people often get wrong?

• “Quantum” on a label is not physics. The word means “how much.” A product name does not tell you whether any quantum effect is involved, or whether anyone tested it.
• Strange does not mean anything goes. Quantum physics uses equations that predict results more exactly than our imaginations can, and those predictions can be checked.
• Quantum effects are not only tiny. Caltech notes that quantum effects act on every scale, even if they are hard to detect in large objects. So the useful question is not “Is it quantum?” but “Does a quantum effect explain this, and how do we know?”
• Doubt is not mockery. Scientists take quantum-mind ideas seriously enough to test them. The wonder that draws people to these ideas is worth keeping.

How can you check a quantum claim yourself?

• Ask what “observer” means. If a claim says a mind changes reality, ask for the experiment in which intention alone changed a measurement.
• Ask what the claim predicts. A testable hypothesis, like Orch OR, makes predictions that labs can check.
• Look for fair trials. For any health product, ask whether it was tested against a look-alike in a controlled trial, and check regulator warnings such as the NRC fact sheet. The NRC’s advice to anyone with health concerns is to talk to their doctor.
• Read the experts directly. The Stanford Encyclopedia’s free entry “Quantum Approaches to Consciousness” surveys the serious proposals and their problems.

The answer stays the same after all this detail. Quantum physics does not say that your mind creates reality or that quantum products heal. Whether quantum effects help make consciousness is still an open question.