Sheila Macrine, PhD

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

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

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

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/...

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/...

YouTube video by Mind-Body Solution Terrence Deacon & Michael Levin: What is Life? Complexity, Cognition & the Origin of Purpose

What is Life?" @drmichaellevin.bsky.social
& #TerrenceDeacon unite thermodynamics and cognition across all scales, bridging #EvoDev, #cogsci & #philosophy. Inspired by @danieldennett's legacy. youtu.be/HuWbHwPZd60?fe… #Evolution
#Biology #Philosophy #Consciousness #Complexity

YouTube video by Mind-Body Solution Karl Friston & Mark Solms: Is it Possible to Engineer Artificial Consciousness?

Can We Engineer Artificial Consciousness?" Professors Karl Friston & Mark Solms, pioneers in #neuroscience, #psychology, and theoretical #biology, dive into the frontiers of #consciousness @KarlFristonNews @Mark_Solms youtu.be/Jtp426wQ-JI?...

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 duplic...

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

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 duplic...

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

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 duplic...

Sorry the one on top of it works. But here you go. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Which link? Air there are a few.

The Sudden Surges That Forge Evolutionary Trees | Quanta Magazine An updated evolutionary model shows that living systems evolve in a split-and-hit-the-gas dynamic, where new lineages appear in sudden bursts rather than during a long marathon of gradual changes.

An updated evolutionary model shows that living systems evolve in a split-and-hit-the-gas dynamic, where new lineages appear in sudden bursts rather than during a long marathon of gradual changes. #Evolution #Biology #Adaptation www.quantamagazine.org/the-sudden-s...

An open-source AI platform to democratize protein design Since its release last year, the open-source platform BindCraft, developed at EPFL, has already disrupted the world of protein design.

Open-source AI platform is democratizing the design of custom proteins! 🧬 It "reverse-engineers" the process, to create specific protein binders for therapeutic research applications. share.google/zQLs8VH9S7jm...
#OpenSource #AI #ProteinDesign #Biotechnology #ScienceForAll

Why AI gets stuck in infinite loops — but conscious minds don’t Anil Seth suggests the difference is that living beings are rooted in time and entropy, a grounding that may be essential for consciousness.

Why does AI get stuck in infinite loops?
"Unlike computers, we are beings in time-embodied, embedded, and entimed in our worlds. We can never be caught in infinite loops because we never exist out of time." bigthink.com/neuropsych/a...