Quantum Neuroscience, Subjective Preferences, and Stock Market Dynamics: A Unified Framework

This paper develops a unified framework linking subjective preferences, stock market behavior, and quantum neuroscience, arguing that financial decision-making originates in quantum cognitive processes rather than classical neural determinism. Preferences, judgments, and ideas are modeled as quantum states evolving within a cognitive Hilbert space, governed by a preference Hamiltonian. These quantum states—subject to superposition, tunneling, entanglement, and uncertainty—explain why investor behavior is inherently probabilistic, context-dependent, and often non-rational. Market prices emerge as observable outcomes of wavefunction collapse across interacting agents, while crashes and bubbles are modeled through quantum tunneling and collective decoherence. We derive a quantum uncertainty principle showing that evaluation volatility and risk perception are fundamentally bounded. Anomalies observed in behavioral and experimental economics, including framing effects and preference reversals, are explained through non-commuting cognitive operators and dynamic, operator-valued utilities. This framework reinterprets market irrationality as a natural consequence of quantum consciousness and provides a rigorous, empirically consistent theory of financial behavior.