So a new paper that was just published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience proposes that self-referential thinking, which can be thought of as the ego, functions as the biological switch between System 1 and System 2 in the brain which it proposes are quantum and classical modes.
It proposes that the brain operates under a tight metabolic budget and that the DMN's process of sustaining boundaries through self-referential activity consumes a substantial portion of that budget which is the connection to Carhart-Harris' entropic brain hypothesis work.
So it describes that when the ego runs hot, the energy needed for energy pumping to maintain quantum coherence in microtubule tryptophan networks is unavailable and the brain falls back into classical sequential computation (System 2), then when the ego quiets, metabolic resources free up for energy pumping like a laser does to sustain coherence, and the brain enters the parallel processing mode (System 1) which it connects to flow states and insights. Then it points to significant implications this has for consciousness. It poses itself as an alternative to Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff's Orch Or theory
Paper here: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2026.1783138/full