What if thinking doesn’t begin in the brain, but in the ceaseless labour of our cells? Today’s essay rethinks the question of how we become minds, arguing that cognition begins not in the mind but in the collective processes that keep a body alive @annaciaunica.bsky.social

I wanted to repost this as soon as it came out. Anna Ciaunica's work is so interesting to me, I think she's right.

Voor de balans met het brein-in-een-vat-model, we zijn al onze cellen 👇

✨😊✨ Terrific interview…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCnz... Thrilled to share this interview here! Thank you @Evan for having me 😊🙏

Here is mine 😅

Ik ben net aangekomen bij het hoofdstuk "Lichaam" bij Sartre. Dit sluit er fraai op aan. How does your body know which cell is yours and which isn't? Het ik vs de ander bij Sartre. "fascinating ‘in between’, for which we don’t have a word in our Western societies yet" Dit is puur Sarte-Heidegger!

Eerder las ik dat AI zich in poëzie verslikt. Nu dat de denker van Rodin eigenlijk een dichter was. Nu AI zaagt aan de poten van ons denken is poëzie het laatste bastion van ons menszijn tegen de oprukkende machines. Macht aan het poëtariaat! 🌹

Love the winter light 😎

Registration now open ! Free and hybrid - full info below www.aalto.fi/en/events/sm...

"Practice, practice, Practice!"

If our thinking is shaped by the whole body, not just the brain, then imagine what it means to grow up with a body that’s different from birth, as #intersex people do. How does a different morphology shape embodied self-experience & embodied cognition, perception, and the sense of “being me”? #4E

Excellent popular article by Anna Ciaunica (@annaciaunica.bsky.social). Along with reader-friendly prose, Anna digs deep into the nature of the self. Highly recommended.

*13th MindBrainBody Symposium* 📆 Mar 9-11, 2026 🏠 #Berlin & virtual (deadline: Jan 8, 2026) Keynotes: - @ulrikebingel.bsky.social - Karl Friston (online) - @tinalonsdorf.bsky.social - Sonja Kotz - Julian Thayer ...& so much more: prizes, posters, talks, food, drinks, encounters. Let's meet!

Excellent piece!

Do you need your toes to think? YESS! Happy to see this one out 😎! From your humble toes to your noble neurons, you need all your cells to solve your most important problem : How to stay alive 😎😅

So, hmmm. This takes ‘embodied’ to its logical extreme, although it’s not currently very ‘embedded’ - the bounds of cognition still seem to be the body. And not all cells are equal here - there IS a difference between losing a toe and losing some brain. Some big bold ideas here, but lots to do

"All our humble bodily cells participate in the making of our experiences and cognitive processes, and not just the ‘noble’ neurons in the brain."

About cognition being much more than neural activity. And the role of the immune system as a sense of self. (Resonates with much of my own thinking in Een wereld vol denkers.) By @annaciaunica.bsky.social in @aeon.co aeon.co/essays/why-y... #psychology #filosofie #neuroscience

Cells are sensors, they may have some intelligence at all but who knows? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Another cool study modelling shared somatosensory and visual representations during naturalistic video watching 👇 'Vicarious body maps bridge vision and touch in the human brain' www.nature.com/articles/s41...

From cells to selves Contemplating the world requires a body, and a body requires an immune system: the rungs of life create the stuff of thought | @annaciaunica.bsky.social #philsky #cognitivescience aeon.co/essays/why-y...

Wonderful food for thought

"In perceiving and experiencing the world, we ‘smuggle in’ our own fundamental self-survival goals. This is something we share with cats and worms and viruses. Whether this is also something we share with artificial systems is another story." - @annaciaunica.bsky.social

Do you need your toes to think? YESS! Happy to see this one out 😎! From your humble toes to your noble neurons, you need all your cells to solve your most important problem : How to stay alive 😎😅

New preprint 😎 osf.io/preprints/ps... I propose an embodied and developmental take on the birth of conscious experiences

Delighted to co-organise this workshop on Self-Other Actions and Interactions in real and virtual worlds Full info here 👇🏼 Shout out to my brilliant trainee Altea Vanni for the poster design 😎 Check out her talk too ! Hybrid format - everyone welcome

November moon sky

Link now publicly available here : osf.io/preprints/ps...

New preprint ! Baby steps in conscious experiences - I explain why every single step matters when we climb the mountain of our embodied conscious life Check it out : it involves also drinking red wine versus seeing red wine 🍷 And thomas Nagel versus my grandma 😎😅 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Super proud co-supervisor of trainee Albert Lukasik ! Here in full swing giving a talk at the HumanTech summit 😎🎉🌟

Yay ! Paper accepted in PAID 😎 Brilliantly led by Julia Ayache and fantastic teamwork with Malika Auvray ! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Thrilled to see this paper accepted 👇🏻 Great teamwork with @annaciaunica.bsky.social and Malika Auvray !

Yay ! Paper accepted in PAID 😎 Brilliantly led by Julia Ayache and fantastic teamwork with Malika Auvray ! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Happy to share that I’ll start as an Associate Editor for the Oxford Academic - Neuroscience of Consciousness journal 😎 Thrilled to join this fantastic team !

Back to Zack’s - my old cafe place in South Ken ! 😎

Fantastic Lee Miller exhibition at Tate Britain in London She was like a cat : living several lives 😎🐈‍⬛

Expect some embodiment twists in the science of consciousness 😎

Happy to share that I’ll start as an Associate Editor for the Oxford Academic - Neuroscience of Consciousness journal 😎 Thrilled to join this fantastic team !

Missed London in November 😎😅

🧠🫀 🫁 💯 Time, space, memory and brain–body rhythms György Buzsáki (2025) Physical time is measured using arbitrary units whereas experienced time is linked to a hierarchy of brain–body rhythms... these rhythms, may be the source of our subjective feeling of time. 👇💥 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Known for having one of the best acoustics in the world 😎 Concertgebaw in Amsterdam I can confirm ! Vienna philharmonic simply gorgeous 🥹

Fall in Amsterdam 😎

Magnificent reading by Arundhati Roy from her book Mother Mary comes to me

An authoritative review on phagosome immunobiology by David Underhill and Kai Li. Highly recommend for anyone interested in innate immunity, antigen presentation, infection and host defense. @cedarssinai.bsky.social rdcu.be/eNIFY