Frontiers | The Body Does Not Keep the Score: Trauma, Predictive Coding, and the Restoration of Metastability The Body Does Not Keep the Score: Trauma, Predictive Coding, and the Restoration of Metastability By Steven Kotler, Michael Mannino, Glenn Fox, Karl Friston ...

Does the body really keep the score? Steven Kotler & Karl Friston argues trauma isn’t stored in tissues. It’s a prediction error—the brain gets stuck in rigid threat expectations. www.frontiersin.org/journals/sys...
#Neuroscience #Trauma #PredictiveCoding #PTSD #FlowState #ActiveInference

When oxygen determines if a limb can regrow Researchers at EPFL have discovered how oxygen-sensing explains why amphibians regenerate limbs and mammals do not.

Why can amphibians regrow lost limbs while mammals can't? Researchers discovered lowering oxygen levels or targeting the oxygen-sensing protein HIF1A awakens latent regenerative abilities in mammalian cells.! news.epfl.ch/news/when-ox...
#RegenerativeMedicine #Biology #TissueRegeneration

Discussion: Richard Watson, Alexey Tolchinsky, Mark Solms, Michael Levin, and Karl Friston YouTube video by Michael Levin's Academic Content

Is forgetting the secret to intelligence? An epic roundtable with Michael Levin, Karl Friston, Mark Solms, Richard Watson, and Alexey Tolchinsky youtu.be/w_ciA-yyF8M?si…
#MichaelLevin
@tolchinsky.bsky.social

How mitochondria organize our “second genome” EPFL scientists discover that a simple shape change in mitochondria helps cells evenly distribute their mitochondrial DNA, solving a long-standing puzzle.

How do our cells organize their “second genome”? Scientists solved a century-old mystery: a temporary shape change called "mitochondrial pearling" evenly distributing mitochondrial DNA. Could unlock new insights into aging and neurodegenerative diseases! actu.epfl.ch/news/how-mit...

Dennett's Real Patterns in Science and Nature How the concept of a pattern, as understood in information science and applied in contemporary AI, can address deep questions in science and philosophy.The

New open access from @MITPress Bridging the gap between information science, biological evolution, and the deep questions of philosophy? Real Patterns—to the roadmap laid out by Daniel Dennett—is out now. @philiplaughlin.bsky.social
direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edi...

No brain? No problem! A simple single-celled organism without a brain or neurons appears to be capable of an advanced form of learning. Meet Stentor coeruleus. t.co/51azt7sF3t

Embodied Intelligence Intelligence research is undergoing a radical transformation, moving beyond the traditional focus on brains and code to increasingly recognize the role of em...

Sneak peek at our upcoming @MITPress Open Access Embodied Intelligence, with Jennifer Fugate, Arsen Abdulali, & Josie Hughes (June, 2026). A major transdisciplinary effort rethink ing intelligence.
mitpress.mit.edu/9780262053495/…
#EmbodiedIntelligence #CognitiveScience #AI @mitpress.bsky.social

Machines all the way up and cognition all the way down: Updating the machine metaphor in biology Cell and developmental biology (CDB) offer numerous remarkable examples of collective adaptive plasticity, as cells coordinate to implement large-scal…

New paper with @drmichaellevin & @RichardWatson90 Cell & developmental biology IS the place to naturalize cognition — no naïve thresholds, no dualism, just a continuum of adaptive plasticity from molecules to morphogenesis.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1084952126000029

Yes. Well it is true. Did you see something to believe different.

Why Do Humanoid Robots Still Struggle With the Small Stuff? | Quanta Magazine The last decade has seen vast improvements in humanoid robots, but graduating to widespread use might require going back to the fundamentals.

Why Do Humanoid Robots Still Struggle With the Small Stuff? www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-human...

Can We Reprogram Life? Dr. Michael Levin on Bioelectricity & Cellular Intelligence | Ep. 14 YouTube video by In Vivo Podcast

Do cells "think"? @drmichaellevin explains how #bioelectricity acts as a #collectiveintelligence, directing cells to build limbs, repair organs, and even "re-program" away from cancer.
youtu.be/M5Qgecp4dA0?...
#Bioelectricity #RegenerativeMedicine #Biology #CancerResearch #CellularIntelligence

What if Fundamental Reality Has Mental and Material Aspects?

Is reality purely material or a mind-body split? Neither. Essay unpacks "material-mental monism," everything possesses both dimensions. Insights panpsychism & our ecological connection to universe. www.templeton.org/news/what-if... #PhilosophyOfMind #Metaphysics #Ecology

New AI model could cut the costs of developing protein drugs MIT chemical engineers used AI to optimize the selection of codon sequences for protein drugs produced by yeast, which could reduce the costs of developing and manufacturing these drugs.

MIT Researchers using LLMs to slash the cost of protein drugs. By decoding the "language" of yeast DNA, this AI optimizes genetic sequences for vaccines and cancer treatments news.mit.edu/2026/new-ai-...
#AI #Biotech #Innovation #DrugDiscovery #HealthTech #SyntheticBiology #ProteinEngineering

"From Experience to Math" by Chris Fields YouTube video by Michael Levin's Academic Content

On embodied cognition @macrinephd.bsky.social You might enjoy this talk by @chrisfields38.bsky.social. I find it to be deeply meaningful. One quote to start with: "Numbers are actions," as in "2" means - repeat an operation f you just did one more time.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5aw...

The brain is much less like a machine than it is like the murmurations of a flock of starlings. Behaviors arise from interactions, not central control. Essay on the #EntangledBrain by Luis @PessoaBrain #Neuroscience #ComplexityScience #CognitiveScience aeon.co/essays/how-t...

Does a virus have agency? Exploring the limitations of a causality-based model of agency.

Does a virus have agency? This text is written based on the work by @macrinephd.bsky.social @drmichaellevin.bsky.social and @wiringthebrain.bsky.social

Comments and critique are most welcome. Kevin, I wonder what you think on this?

open.substack.com/pub/alexeyto...

In Quantum Mechanics, Nothingness Is the Potential To Be Anything | Quanta Magazine Try as they might, scientists can’t truly rid a space or an object of its energy. But what “zero-point energy” really means is up for interpretation.

Think you can truly empty a box? #Quantummechanics says otherwise. Even at absolute zero, "zero-point energy" remains because the Heisenberg uncertainty principle forbids total stillness.
#ZeroPointEnergy #Physics #Science #CasimirEffect www.quantamagazine.org/in-quantum-m...

The Entangled Brain: How Perception, Cognition, and Emotion Are Woven Together A new vision of the brain as a fully integrated, networked organ.Popular neuroscience accounts often focus on specific mind-brain aspects like addiction, c

Here is the direct link. direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Algorithms induce "Cognitive Drift" gradually resetting our mental baselines. A neuro-anchored protocol to audit how AI curation reweights user attention and emotion over time. t.co/1kSlt1Ujut
#AI #Neuroscience #DigitalEthics #MentalHealth #AlgorithmAuditing
#ResponsibleAI #ActiveInference

The Entangled Brain: How Perception, Cognition, and Emotion Are Woven Together A new vision of the brain as a fully integrated, networked organ.Popular neuroscience accounts often focus on specific mind-brain aspects like addiction, c

Wow! Entangled Brain free @mitpress.bsky.social Open Access! Forget isolated regions. @PessoaBrain shows behavior emerges from “collective computations” across a fully integrated, complex system. mitpress.mit.edu/978026254460...
#Neuroscience #ComplexityScience #SystemsBiology #BrainResearch

Happy & Healthy New Year!

New preprint with super @manuelbaltieri.bsky.social !

Mathematical approaches to the study of agents

osf.io/preprints/ps...

News about biological computationalism -agency arises from the constraints of energy & real-time physics—not abstract code. To engineer #consciousness, need to build systems that "feel" the cost of their computation.
neurosciencenews.com/consciousness-…
#Agency #Robotics #BioEngineering

Frontiers | Temporal depth in a coherent self and in depersonalization: theoretical model Multiple theoretical models of dissociative experiences have been formulated over the last century. These theories are clinically useful; however, it remains...

Rethinking the mechanism of @dissociation . Combines first-principles & nonlinear dynamics: collapses in "temporal depth" is the key driver behind the loss of self-coherence. tinyurl.com/2wevuvvp
@drmichaellevin.bsky.social , ‪@tolchinsky.bsky.social @lancelotdacosta.bsky.social

How are the self, space, and time related? A new study on #depersonalization found feeling disconnected from your body-linked to time slowing down, & feeling detached from the world-linked to time speeding up. @Annaciaunica tinyurl.com/bdh4thdb #Neuroscience #TimePerception #Consciousness

A brain-wide map of decision-making! 🧠 Study reveals how sensory inputs, choices & motor actions are encoded across 279 brain regions. Dataset publicly available
#Neuroscience #BrainMapping #DecisionMaking #OpenScience #BigData #Neuropixels t.co/54Lc3CmYgV

What do proteins, animal forms & languages have in common? #Evolution! Unified framework detects evolutionary leaps #branching across #molecular, #morphological, and #cultural scales onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
#Genomics #Adaptation
#ComputationalBiology #Biology

New research calls an Alzheimer's protein "chameleon-like." 🦎 It shape-shifts to form toxic plaques, but this same flexibility also allows the plaques to break apart. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.10…
#Alzheimers #amyloid #research #neuroscience #proteinfolding #dementia

Beetle grows ‘termite’ on back to steal food Puppet helps insect trick real termites into feeding it

Nature's #biomimicry at its finest! rove beetle that grows a hyper-realistic "termite puppet" on its back to steal food 🐜 scim.ag/40kQtbI h/t @justinechterna9
#mimicry #evolution #entomology #newspecies #insects #natureiswild

Evolution is coupled with branching across many granularities of life | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Across many scales of life, the rate of evolutionary change is often accelerated at the time when one lineage splits into two. The emergence of novel protein function can be facilitated by gene duplication (neofunctionalization); rapid morphological ...

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...