Contextuality Signatures in Organoid Intelligence: Operationalizing Quantum-Like Cognition in Wetware

Quantum-like models of cognition account for order effects, conjunction and disjunction fallacies, and contextuality in human decision data using the Hilbert-space formalism without claiming literal quantum processes in the brain. Two decades of theoretical development have produced a mature mathematical apparatus, but its empirical foundation rests almost entirely on human-subject paradigms that are subject to linguistic priming confounds, demand characteristics, and replication concerns. This paper proposes that engineered brain-organoid preparations on multielectrode arrays—specifically the Cortical Labs CL1 and DishBrain-class systems—constitute the first substrate on which the structural commitments of quantum-like cognition can be tested without these confounds. I specify four operational signatures (sequential-stimulation order effects, Contextuality-by-Default cyclic-system inequalities, response replicability under non-invasive measurement, and interference effects in combined stimulation), and characterize, for each, the formal observable, the discriminating prediction against classical adaptive-learning baselines, and the substrate-level constraints imposed by current commercial wetware. The paper is offered as a theoretical specification, not an experimental protocol, and is calibrated for falsifiability rather than confirmation: a positive result on any signature would constrain classical models of organoid learning without confirming quantum-like dynamics; a fully negative result would narrow—though not conclusively delimit—the empirical scope of the quantum-like cognition program, with one natural reading being that these signatures depend more strongly on linguistic, pragmatic, or task-structured features of human-subject paradigms than on generic neural substrate dynamics.