A study of participants attending public concerts that staged classical and contemporary chamber music had the goal to analyse the associations between self-reported experiences and physiological responses, hence addressing a core question of embodied cognition. A sample of 690 participants was recruited, whose physiological signals were recorded with wearable sensors during concerts. After the...
Egoic dynamics have shaped human cognition, social structures, and technological systems for tens of thousands of years, yet their historical continuity remains theoretically underdeveloped. This paper reconstructs a genealogy of egoic development from early survival logics to its contemporary algorithmic forms. Drawing on active inference accounts of self maintenance, developmental psychology,...
In recent years, numerous publications have emerged claiming that animals possess consciousness. Moreover, neurophysiological literature has discussed the possible existence of consciousness in artificial intelligence (AI). Both ideas stem from analyses of the behavior of animals and AI systems. Here, I argue that it is impossible to draw conclusions about animal consciousness based solely on...
Brain and BehaviorApril 1, 2026Livio Tarchi, Lorenzo Lasagni, Leonardo Ubaldi et al.
Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder marked by specific cognitive and clinical disturbances, for which neuroimaging biomarkers remain elusive. Novel theoretical and computational frameworks, such as integrated information decomposition, offer promising approaches to provide interpretable biomarkers for neuroimaging alterations in schizophrenia, potentially capturing disruptions...
The “scaling-up” problem concerns radical embodied cognition’s (REC) supposed inability to extend its explanatory reach beyond simple cognitive phenomena. This paper questions the problem’s main assumption, that is, the possibility of sorting phenomena according to their inherent cognitive complexity or representation-hunger. To do so, I focus on a class of phenomena whose degree of...
The study of the novel Ifigenia. (Diario de una señorita que escribió porque se fastidiaba) by Teresa de la Parra, allows us to propose a debate over the representations of gender (woman, the feminine) and the body in the character of María Eugenia Alonso and her relationship with representation and phenomenal consciousness (Ned Block). The narrative structure of the novel (epistle and diary)...
This paper develops a quadripartite panpsychist theory of shamanism(s). This fourpart framework revives and combines four theories: (i) mystical constructivism, (ii) role-taking theory, and (iii) mental imagery cultivation as a cultural practice founded upon (iv) a panpsychist philosophy of ultimate reality. I argue that this quadripartite model allows for the recognition of something ‘real’ in...
Inhalational anesthetics are currently believed to cause unconsciousness by acting on multiple molecular targets including neural ion channels, receptors, mitochondria, synaptic proteins, and cytoskeletal proteins. Inhalational anesthetics including isoflurane bind to cytoskeletal microtubules (MTs), potentially contributing to causing unconsciousness. This possibility is supported by our...
This paper examines the interrelationship between embodied consciousness and neoliberal ecology in David Szalay’s Flesh (2025). Drawing upon the philosophical frameworks of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault, the study explores how the human body functions not merely as a biological entity but as a lived site shaped by socio-economic forces, power relations, and cultural structures. The...
This essay articulates a distinction between my formal theological work—which engages the scholarly apparatus of Elliot Wolfson's phenomenology, Jonathan Eybeschütz's radical mysticism, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe's teachings on divine concealment—and my personal, experiential understanding of 'higher power' as it functions in spiritual practice. While my academic writing explores the objective...