Embodiment & Emergence — Weekly Roundup #3
April 10, 2026 · system coupling · embodied regulation · distributed processing · emergent dynamics
This is the third issue of the Embodiment & Emergence — Weekly Roundup. Each week, it brings together research and writing on how mind, body, and behavior organize across situations and over time. The material is curated with AI support, while selection, framing, and interpretation remain human. Not all findings are equally strong. Many are provisional or correlational. Still, they point to patterns that show up in practice.
Embodiment starts from the premise that mind is not just something the brain does in isolation, but something shaped by the body’s sensations, actions, physiology, and ongoing exchanges with the world.
Emergence points to how larger patterns — in thought, behavior, identity, and groups — arise from many interacting parts rather than from a single controlling center.
What these pieces make easier to see is how dependent behavior is on what it’s coupled to. Across contexts, coordination doesn’t hold on its own; it shifts with interaction, physiology, and constraint. A change in rhythm or another person’s presence can reorganize how someone thinks or acts, even when nothing about the individual seems different. In practice, this makes it harder to treat behavior as fixed or internally driven, and more useful to look at the conditions shaping what becomes possible in a given moment.
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This Week’s Synthesis — April 10, 2026: Across these pieces, a consistent pattern emerges: coordination within a system is shaped by its coupling to other systems, rather than maintained independently. In interpersonal breathing, aligning with another person reorganizes internal physiological dynamics. In neural and immune models, cognition is treated as distributed across interacting cellular systems. In active inference and psychoanalytic accounts, conscious and unconscious processes arise from recursive, embodied regulation of action and uncertainty. Across levels—from cellular networks to social interaction—behavior looks less like the output of a centralized controller and more like the result of shifting relationships among interacting components.
The Social, Decoupled Self: Breathing Together and the Trade-Off Between Inter- and Intrapersonal Coupling
Konvalinka, I. (2025). The social, decoupled self: Interpersonal synchronization of breathing alters intrapersonal cardiorespiratory coupling. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.29.679159
TAGS
interpersonal synchronization, respiration, heart rate, cardiorespiratory coupling, social interaction, physiological coordination, self–other coupling, embodiment, emergence
OVERVIEW:
This preprint reports two experiments examining how synchronizing breathing with another person affects the coupling between one’s own respiration and heart rhythms. Human participants synchronized their breathing either bidirectionally with a partner, unidirectionally with a confederate, or with pre-recorded breathing signals, while respiration and ECG were continuously recorded. Relative phase analyses were used to quantify both interpersonal respiratory synchronization and intra-individual cardiorespiratory coupling. The work focuses on how these phase relationships change during interaction compared to resting baselines.
OF NOTE:
Bidirectional breathing synchronization was associated with in-phase synchronization of heart rhythms between individuals, suggesting that shared respiratory patterns can extend coordination to the cardiac level. At the same time, interpersonal synchronization coincided with “cardiorespiratory decoupling,” in which an individual’s respiration and heart rhythms became more out-of-phase relative to baseline and the unidirectional condition. Stronger respiratory alignment between partners predicted greater disruption of intra-individual cardiorespiratory coupling. This pattern is consistent with an embodied, emergent view in which coupling to others reorganizes internal physiological dynamics rather than merely adding an extra layer of coordination.
CAVEATS:
Details about sample sizes, participant characteristics, and specific task parameters are not specified in the abstract. The study design and analyses, as summarized, are correlational with respect to phase relationships, so causal claims about mechanisms remain limited. The findings are currently reported as a bioRxiv preprint and have not undergone peer review. Generalization beyond the specific breathing synchronization tasks and laboratory context is therefore constrained and remains to be tested.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
The data suggest a trade-off between interpersonal and intrapersonal physiological coupling: aligning one’s breathing with another person strengthens self–other synchronization but is associated with weaker coordination between one’s own respiratory and cardiac rhythms. This can be interpreted as a physiological signature of “self-decoupling” during social interaction, where internal coherence is partially reorganized to support joint dynamics. For embodiment- and emergence-oriented perspectives, the work underscores how social coupling is instantiated through shifting phase relations across interacting physiological systems. A cautious reading is that interpersonal rhythm alignment may reshape, rather than simply add to, existing bodily coordination patterns.
Coupling Neuronal and Immune Processing in Human Embodiment
Ciaunica, A., & Levin, M. (2023). Coupling neuronal and immune processing in human embodiment. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 17, 10230067. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10230067/
TAGS
embodiment, basal cognition, immune system, self-organization, cellular agency, brain–body interaction, neuroimmunology, distributed cognition, morphogenesis
OVERVIEW:
This is a theoretical and integrative article that argues for a shift from a neuron-centric to a cell-centric view of cognition in humans. The authors synthesize work on basal cognition in simple organisms, developmental bioelectricity, immune network dynamics, and neuroimmunological interactions. They propose that cognition is implemented across multiscale cellular networks, with special emphasis on coordinated processing between neural and immune systems in maintaining a self-organizing living body. No new empirical data are presented.
OF NOTE:
The paper challenges the assumption that only brains cognize, advancing the “simple minds–complex life continuity thesis,” in which all cells are treated as primitive cognizers in a functional sense. Immune networks are described as performing pattern recognition, classification, and flexible “collective decisions” via swarm-like self-organization, extending cognitive-like functions beyond the nervous system. The authors argue that neuronal and immune cells jointly track and regulate the organism’s internal and external conditions to preserve bodily integrity. This supports a view of embodiment and emergence in which cognition arises from distributed coordination across interacting cellular systems rather than a single neural control center.
CAVEATS:
Because this is a conceptual synthesis, its central claims about “all cells as cognitive” and immune processing as an “act of cognition” remain at the level of interpretation, not experimentally established redefinitions of cognition. The article selectively reviews literatures (e.g., basal cognition, neuroimmunology) without providing a systematic or quantitative meta-analysis. Many illustrative examples are drawn from diverse species and experimental paradigms, which constrains direct generalization to human cognition. The proposal that neural and immune systems should be treated as co-equal cognitive subsystems is programmatic and requires targeted empirical testing.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
The article suggests that understanding human cognition requires starting from biological self-organization and cellular information processing, rather than from abstract mental categories or neural circuitry alone. It frames immune networks, alongside neurons, as key contributors to the organism’s ongoing self–world regulation, implying that cognitive processes are inherently bodily and multi-systemic. For readers interested in embodiment and emergence, it offers a coherent vocabulary—basal cognition, cellular agency, immune “immunoknowledge”—for linking cell-level dynamics to whole-organism behavior. A cautious conclusion is that future cognitive science may need to treat the brain–immune–body ensemble, not the brain in isolation, as the primary locus of cognitive organization.
A Beautiful Loop: An Active Inference Account of Consciousness
Laukkonen, R., Friston, K., & Chandaria, S. (2025). A beautiful loop: An active inference theory of consciousness. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106296
TAGS
consciousness, active inference, predictive processing, generative models, precision weighting, metacognition, meditation, psychedelics, artificial intelligence, neurophenomenology
OVERVIEW:
This article is a theoretical and computational proposal, not an empirical study. The authors articulate three necessary conditions for consciousness—generation of a unified “reality model” (epistemic field), inferential competition for entry into this model (Bayesian binding), and “epistemic depth,” defined as global recursive sharing of this model. They formalize these ideas within hierarchical active inference by introducing a global hyper-model that controls precision-weighting across layers. The framework is then used to interpret a range of conscious and altered states, including sleep, meditation, and psychedelic experiences.
OF NOTE:
Conceptually, the piece reframes consciousness as a property of a world-model that knows itself, rather than as a property of a distinct self-model or agent. Embodiment is foregrounded via the role of multisensory and interoceptive streams in constructing the reality model and maintaining organismic boundaries. Emergence is central: coherent conscious contents arise from inferential competition and recursive precision control distributed across a hierarchy, rather than from any single locus. The notion of epistemic depth as hyper-modeling of precision provides a way to distinguish awareness from its contents and to map diverse states (e.g., attention, mindfulness, ego-dissolution) within a shared computational space.
CAVEATS:
The proposal is primarily conceptual and computational; it does not present new behavioral, neuroimaging, or physiological data. Many of the suggested neural implementations (e.g., long-range connectivity, neuromodulatory “sprays,” electromagnetic fields) are sketched at a high level and not tied to specific experimental tests in detail. The three conditions for consciousness are argued to be plausible and sufficient within this framework but are not independently validated against rival theories or across species. Applications to meditation, psychedelics, and artificial intelligence remain interpretive and illustrative rather than empirically constrained.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
A careful reader should view Beautiful Loop Theory as an attempt to make a full theory of consciousness out of active inference by adding explicit criteria—reality modeling, inferential competition, and epistemic depth—plus a formal hyper-model for global precision control. This supports a view of consciousness as an emergent, recursively self-modeling field grounded in the body–brain’s ongoing predictive engagement with its environment. The account suggests testable directions, such as looking for signatures of global precision control and recursive modeling across states and systems that vary in awareness. It also cautions that artificial systems meeting these three computational conditions might be candidates for minimal consciousness, even in the absence of verbal reports, underscoring ethical and methodological challenges.
Embodied Unconscious, Predictive Brains, and the Clinical “Mess” of Psychoanalysis
Atomic Podcast w/ Rodney Sappington. (2026, March 30). *Atomic Podcast EP. 27 – Interview with Mark Solms* [Video]. YouTube.
TAGS
consciousness, unconscious processes, predictive processing, psychoanalysis, embodiment, homeostasis, attachment, neuropsychoanalysis, affect, social cognition
OVERVIEW:
This long-form interview explores Mark Solms’s integrative account of consciousness, the unconscious, and psychoanalysis in dialogue with contemporary neuroscience and predictive-processing frameworks. Mark Solms is a South African neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst known for pioneering “neuropsychoanalysis,” an effort to integrate psychoanalytic concepts (like the unconscious, drive, and transference) with contemporary affective and cognitive neuroscience. Using everyday physiological examples (e.g., breathing, blood pressure, peristalsis) and developmental attachment scenarios, Solms distinguishes non-conscious bodily regulation from unconscious mental policies that were once conscious and then automatized. He links these policies to subcortical action systems (basal ganglia, cerebellum, amygdala) and to clinical phenomena such as repression, infantile amnesia, and transference. The discussion also examines how psychoanalytic technique, with its “talking cure” and rule of abstinence, operates on enacted patterns of feeling and action rather than on abstract theory alone.
OF NOTE:
Solms proposes that consciousness is functionally tied to uncertainty about “policies” for action: policies followed unconsciously are those with high confidence, whereas conscious feelings mark situations of low confidence and guide policy revision. This is explicitly framed in simple computational terms—consciousness tracks and helps resolve prediction uncertainty—while remaining grounded in bodily homeostasis and drive, where the mind performs “predictive work” on behalf of physiological viability. His account of the Freudian unconscious reinterprets repression as prematurely automatized, subcortical action programs that escape reconsolidation, making psychoanalytic work a matter of observing and reshaping enacted policies in the therapeutic relationship. The conversation consistently supports a view of mind as embodied (rooted in homeostatic demands and affect) and emergent from distributed brain–body–environment dynamics, including social interaction and shared attachment systems.
CAVEATS:
This is a theoretical and clinical-interpretive discussion, not a report of new empirical studies; quantitative data, experimental details, and formal models are not specified. Neuroscientific claims—such as localizing non-declarative systems to basal ganglia, cerebellum, and amygdala, or describing consciousness as “limited resource”—are presented at a conceptual level, without methodological particulars or citations. The developmental examples (e.g., “rock and a hard place” attachment choices, automatized attraction to a “hard place” in adulthood) are illustrative case-style narratives, not systematically derived epidemiological or longitudinal findings. Likewise, the proposed alignment between psychoanalysis and predictive processing is sketched rather than formally derived, so its empirical and computational scope remains to be tested.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
The interview articulates a neuropsychoanalytic framework in which unconscious mental life consists of embodied, subcortical action policies laid down under homeostatic and affective constraints, many established early in development and shielded from later revision by repression and infantile amnesia. Consciousness, on this view, is closely linked to affective “felt” uncertainty and serves the adaptive function of revising policies when automatic solutions are unreliable. Psychoanalysis is recast as an experimental setting that makes these policies visible through talk, transference, and carefully constrained enactment, enabling reconsolidation rather than mere repetition. More broadly, Solms argues that neuroscience that ignores lived subjective experience and the “messiness” of clinical encounter risks missing crucial data about how brains, bodies, and social worlds jointly organize personhood.
Bridging Affective Feeling and Action Kinematics in Insula–Premotor Circuits
G. Di Cesare, Y. Koush, P. Zeidman, A. Sciutti, K. Friston, & G. Rizzolatti, Bridging feeling and motion: Insula–premotor dynamics in the processing of action vitality forms, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (37) e2514139122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2514139122
TAGS
vitality forms, insula, premotor cortex, affective state, fMRI, dynamic causal modeling, parieto-frontal network, action kinematics, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
OVERVIEW:
The study examined how internal affective states shape the kinematic “vitality forms” (VFs) of actions using fMRI. Participants first evoked either a positive (enthusiastic) or negative (angry) affective state (feeling task) and then executed an action while maintaining that state (execution task). Univariate analyses showed insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation during the feeling phase, with additional recruitment of premotor and parietal areas during execution. Dynamic causal modeling was used to estimate directionality of information flow among insula, premotor cortex, prefrontal cortex, and parietal regions.
OF NOTE:
The authors report that the insula is already active during the feeling phase that precedes action, and that this affective information modulates premotor cortex activity. During execution, motor commands are modeled as emerging from premotor cortex and influencing insula and prefrontal activity, effectively “coloring” the ongoing action with a vitality form. This bidirectional pattern is consistent with an embodied view in which affective states and motor commands are co-organized rather than segregated. It also supports an emergent picture in which affective meaning arises from dynamic interactions across insula, premotor, prefrontal, and parietal circuits.
CAVEATS:
The description provided does not specify sample size, participant characteristics, or trial structure, limiting inferences about generalizability and robustness. All evidence is based on fMRI and dynamic causal modeling, which support inferences about effective connectivity but cannot establish causality at the neuronal level. The study focuses only on two affective conditions (enthusiastic vs. angry), so it is not clear how broadly the reported dynamics extend across the affective space. Behavioral measures of actual kinematic differences in actions are not specified here, making it difficult to directly link neural dynamics to observed movement patterns.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
The findings suggest that insula-centered affective processes influence premotor regions during the feeling phase and that premotor outputs in turn modulate insula activity during action execution. This reciprocal flow provides a plausible neural substrate for how internal feeling states can shape, and be shaped by, the vitality forms of movement. The pattern is consistent with an embodied and emergent account of affective action, in which “how” an action is performed is jointly determined by distributed affective–motor dynamics. A careful reader can treat this work as evidence that affective valence and motor control are tightly integrated across insula–premotor–prefrontal networks, while noting that more detailed behavioral and causal data are needed.
This Week’s Takeaways — April 10, 2026: The evidence across these domains is uneven, and many claims—particularly those extending cognitive language beyond neural systems—remain interpretive rather than empirically settled. A careful synthesis suggests that embodiment and emergence are most useful when treated as constraints on explanation rather than as conclusions: biological systems are organized through structure, interaction, and context, but the specific mechanisms by which these dynamics produce cognition and experience remain open questions.
In practice, this shifts where attention goes. With individuals, it becomes harder to treat behavior as stable across situations, and more useful to look at the conditions shaping how responses organize under pressure. In teams, breakdowns in coordination are less easily attributed to single actors and more often reflect how the group is coupled in the moment. At the organizational level, patterns that appear cultural or structural often persist because they are continuously reproduced through interaction, not because they are explicitly designed.
The broader implication is a shift toward examining how coordination is reorganized across systems, while maintaining clear boundaries between observed phenomena, inferred mechanisms, and conceptual framing.
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