Consciousness as a Boundary Phenomenon: A Testable Framework Linking Quantum-Classical Transition Dynamics and Testable Predictions

What physical process underlies the transition between unconscious and conscious brain states? Indicators such as the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI) can track consciousness level with clinical reliability, yet the mechanism that generates conscious experience remains unspecified. We develop a framework—the Boundary Process Hypothesis (BPH)—built on a single empirically risky conjecture: we hypothesize that consciousness may be the quantum-to-classical decoherence transition as experienced from the inside. On this view, what we call ‘experience’ is the dynamical process through which quantum coherence is irreversibly lost and effective classicality takes hold—the decoherence/einselection process described by Zurek (2003). The hard problem of consciousness and the measurement problem of quantum mechanics, on this reading, may be structurally related aspects of a single physical process—a testable conjecture, not a settled conclusion. We position BPH relative to Integrated Information Theory, Orchestrated Objective Reduction, and recent work on quantum-classical hybrid agency, then derive one primary and two secondary falsifiable predictions: (P1, primary) putative decoherence-related proxy variables (spectral entropy and excess noise ratio from NV-diamond magnetometry) should improve out-of-sample prediction of PCI scores beyond a strong classical baseline under pharmacological modulation; (P2, exploratory) experienced meditators may show detectable proxy differences versus controls after strong confound control; (P3, secondary) graded anesthetic depth should map onto systematically changing proxy profiles. We outline a staged experimental program beginning with a near-term in vitro pilot. Falsification is explicit: if the proxy-augmented model fails to improve consciousness-level prediction over the classical-only baseline by at least ΔR² ≥ 0.05 across two independent datasets, the empirical core of BPH is disconfirmed.