New paper with @doctorjosh.bsky.social, @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, and co-first author Vaibhav Pai. This one is a doozy - in it we show that we can modulate the degree of emergent, multicellular organization in a Xenobot with an exogenous compound (ATP). 1/N www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

What are the preferences of novel in silico and in vivo agents that aren't directly engineered toward a specific set of behaviors? An example, from the world of Lenia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenia) - here's our #preprint on agnosiophobia (avoidance of the unknown): arxiv.org/abs/2605.30708

My good friend and neuroscientist Oné Pagán: youtu.be/pXMZHPvHRlU?...

AI agents can already scan the literature, analyze data, and generate hypotheses. Some predict they’ll revolutionize medicine. Others warn they’ll flood science. Tomorrow, @drmichaellevin.bsky.social and @odedrechavi.bsky.social discuss this topic. Register here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Might metabolic networks be trainable as gene-regulatory networks are (thoughtforms.life/but-where-is...)? New #preprint Axel de Baat "Homeostatic feedback model of energy metabolism with adaptive enzyme levels exhibits problem solving behavior" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Ever wanted to talk to a gene regulatory network? Ever wonder what they could do in a different context, embodiment, space? New preprint - part of our approach for developing ways to talk to cells, organs, and much much weirder agents: @yanbozhang123.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2605.16321 🧪

Final forms of 3 new papers! #consciousness #selforganization #cognition #economics and more 🧪 royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article... royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article... royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/article...

🧪 Awesome new theme issue of Philosophical Transactions: ‘World models in natural and artificial intelligence’ Thank you Adam Safron! royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/issue/3...

New #preprint, @pigozzife.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2605.06746 "The Causally Emergent Alignment Hypothesis: Causal Emergence Aligns with and Predicts Final Reward in Reinforcement Learning Agents" 🧪

New #preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2604.01932 "BraiNCA: brain-inspired neural cellular automata and applications to morphogenesis and motor control" @bhartl.bsky.social and Leo Pio-Lopez:

New #preprint: @LPiolopez and Benjamin Lyons www.preprints.org/manuscript/2... "From Cancer to AI Alignment: Tackling Externalities Through Homeostatic Principles"

#naturephotography #infrared

Some life forms:

New preprint! Memory in Xenobots. @paivaibhav.bsky.social , James A. Traer, Megan M. Sperry, Yuxin Zehg www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Two different experiences produced distinct, long-term, stimulus-specific memories, detectable through both transcriptional and physiological signatures.

What would a nervous system look like if it self-assembled inside a novel being that hadn't faced a history of selection for its organism-level form and function? How would #Xenobots look & act, and what their transcriptome would be, with neurons? advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Our special issue "Biology computes: Information processing across biological scales" Editorial - authors.elsevier.com/a/1moUK3si8Q... Contributions from @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, Chris Barnes, Matthias Függer, Thomas Nowak, @angelgm.eurosky.social - www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

Wyss Institute researchers, led by @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, create the first-of-its-kind neurobots, autonomously moving self-organizing biological robots with a nervous system that integrates and functions. @tufts.edu

Call for papers for 'Artificial Life for Science and Engineering' at ALife 26. We seek work applying ALife concepts and tools to model real-world systems and engineer solutions — and assist scientific discovery through open-ended and curiosity-driven search. Call info: alifeforscience.github.io

Replies to the comments on www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... is now out here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "From complementarity to non-duality: Seeing objects and processes as pragmatic constructs"

New preprint with Léo Pio-Lopez: www.preprints.org/manuscript/2... "Multi-Scale Longevity: Defeating Aging from Cells to Embodied Human Minds, and the Future of the Species" a broader view of longevity research.

A perspective, in 2 parts: link.springer.com/article/10.1... link.springer.com/article/10.1... Mind Everywhere: A Framework for Conceptualizing Goal-Directedness in Biology and Other Domains—Parts One and Two 🧪

Final version of this paper with Richard Watson is out! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "Machines all the way up and cognition all the way down: Updating the machine metaphor in biology" (quite a bit different than the original preprint at osf.io/preprints/os...).

1/6 Excited to share the call for posters & registration for the 2nd XSCAPE Workshop: "Varieties of Externalism" ! 📅 Friday, April 10th, 2026 — Gallery Room, Bramber House, University of Sussex Registration is free but places are limited. 🧵

New preprint with Giovanni Pezzulo: arxiv.org/abs/2602.08079 Bootstrapping Life-Inspired Machine Intelligence: The Biological Route from Chemistry to Cognition and Creativity

New preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2601.14096 @chrisfields38.bsky.social @bhartl.bsky.social Leo Pio-Lopez "Remapping and navigation of an embedding space via error minimization: a fundamental organizational principle of cognition in natural and artificial systems" 🧪

What kinds of cognitions are possible? Are there discrete classes of cognition? Here's our new paper with @brigan.bsky.social @jordiplam.bsky.social @mitibennett.bsky.social @mkhochb.bsky.social and @drmichaellevin.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2601.12837 We explore basal, neural and human-AI spaces.

A new, long paper on evolution - natural induction - split into 2: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsfs/article... royalsocietypublishing.org/rsfs/article... @RichardWatson90 and Tim Lewens

#naturephotography #infrared

Final version is out: @LPiolopez onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... "Atavistic Genetic Expression Dissociation (AGED) DuringAging: Meta-Phylostratigraphic Evidence of Cellular andTissue-Level Phylogenetic Dissociation" 🧪

Final version is out: authors.elsevier.com/c/1mEoa5bD-s... "Neural cellular automata: Applications to biology and beyond classical AI" @bhartl.bsky.social Léo Pio-Lopez

#naturephotography #infrared

New preprint - Thomas Pollak (substack.com/@drtompollak), Anjali Bhat, Matt Butler, @rokberlot.bsky.social, Mark J Edwards osf.io/preprints/ps... "Have you tried switching it off and on again Mechanisms and therapeutic prospects of resetting homeostatic set points in medicine and neuropsychiatry"

#godzilla #NaturePhotography #infrared

"Cognition all the way down". Great to see this fine new paper from @robertchisciure.bsky.social & @drmichaellevin.bsky.social out now in Synthese - introducing a new metric to quantify biological intelligence as search efficiency in multidimensional problem spaces link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2510.19976 "Morphological computational capacity of Physarum polycephalum" Suyash Bajpai, Aviva Lucas-DeMott, @msahsorin.bsky.social, Philip Kurian

new paper with @robertchisciure.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1... "Cognition all the way down 2.0: neuroscience beyond neurons in the diverse intelligence era" 🧪

New paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "New insights in the gut–brain axis: the role of bioelectrical microbiome" Juan Lombardo-Hernandez, Jesús Mansilla-Guardiola, Stefano Geuna, Michael Levin, Celia Herrera-Rincon #bioelectricity #microbiome

Official version is out - aging as loss of goal-directedness: advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... @bhartl.bsky.social Léo Pio-Lopez

New paper dropped! Led by @thosvarley.bsky.social and Pai Vaibhav, we show that flows of information within a #xenobot resemble flows of information observed in adult human brains. Thomas provides caveats and context below. w/ @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, Caitlin Grasso, & Jeantine Lunshof.

For those interested in our growing body of work on "polycomputation", here's my attempt to summarize it in 40 minutes: youtu.be/XnObbF2FkE4?...

Here's a talk that's quite different from ones I've given before, although it has connections to everything I often talk about, presented at #alife2025: thoughtforms.life/meet-a-new-s... (downloadable slides link there too). 🧪

Thanks for hosting us Foresight Institute! (w/ @tarinz.bsky.social and @drmichaellevin.bsky.social) www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCq2...

New paper: Santosh Manicka www.cell.com/cell-reports... "Field-mediated bioelectric basis of morphogenetic prepatterning" #morphogenesis #bioelectricity #fields 🧪