Title: Perception of a sensation as an emergent state of a cognitive network
When: Thursday, October 23, 2025, 12:00
Place: Department of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, Faculty of Sciences, Module 5, Seminar Room (5th Floor)
Speaker: Belen Valenzuela (ICMM-CSIC)
In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the need to develop models that explain health and disease within a biopsychosocial framework [1,2]. Among these, phase transition models, originally formulated in physics, have proven particularly successful[3,4]. Our research proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the perception of sensations based on field theory of condensed matter [1,2]. Within this framework, perception is conceptualized as an order parameter that can exist in three distinct states: alert-protection-isolation, trust-explore-play, or neutral. The model is embedded in a socio-environmental context that can be modulated by various control parameters. By integrating concepts from cognitive science through the formalism of condensed matter field theory, the model offers insights into cognitive phenomenology and identifies potential measurable coefficients applicable in clinical studies.
Reference
- E. García and X. E. Barandiaran, Synthese 205, 53 (2025)
- D. Borsboom, World Psychiatry 16, 5 (2017)
- Miguel Muñoz, Criticality and dynamical scaling in living systems, Rev. Mod. Phys. 90, 031001 (2018)
- Van Der Maas, H.L.J.; Kan, K.-J.; Marsman, M.; Stevenson, C.E. Network Models for Cognitive Development and Intelligence. J. Intell. (2017)
- B. Valenzuela, Frontiers in Pain Research 5 (2024)
- Laura Fanfarillo, Gustavo Diez, Victor Gomez Mayordomo, Miguel Bosch, J. Ricardo Arias-González, and Belén Valenzuela, arXiv:2507.06041
