Researchers Theorise That Our Brains Are Building the Universe

In this Modernity article, Steve Watson highlights recent speculative theories suggesting consciousness may not merely observe reality, but could play a foundational role in generating or shaping the universe.

• The article centers on emerging debates in quantum physics and consciousness research about whether conscious experience is more fundamental than matter itself.
• It cites coverage of a 2025 paper by Uppsala University professor Maria Strømme, whose model proposes consciousness as a universal awareness field from which space, time, and matter emerge.
• The theory reframes the Big Bang not simply as the beginning of physical matter, but as a kind of differentiation of awareness into the structured universe.
• Watson notes that the idea draws from quantum field theory, emergence, symmetry breaking, and non-dual philosophy, making it highly provocative but far from settled science.
• The article also references New Scientist’s coverage of a broader scientific turn toward taking conscious experience more seriously in cosmology and physics.
• University of Rochester physicist Adam Frank is cited arguing that experience is the only direct access humans have to reality, while the purely physical world is a useful abstraction.
• The piece connects these ideas to earlier theories about consciousness operating at a quantum level inside the brain, including microtubule-based models.
• It mentions a 2024 University of Maryland study involving rats, anesthesia, and microtubule stabilization as part of the ongoing debate around the Penrose-Hameroff Orch-OR theory.
• Oxford physicist Vlatko Vedral’s Many-Worlds perspective is also included, suggesting quantum events may branch reality into alternate paths.
• The larger takeaway is that while these theories remain controversial, some scientists are increasingly willing to question whether consciousness is an accidental byproduct of the universe — or one of its deepest foundations.

Read the full story: https://modernity.news/2026/05/13/researchers-theorise-that-our-brains-are-building-the-universe/