Mind as Motion:

Patterns from Psychology to Neurobiology

Inês Hipólito,1,2,3 Paul van Geert,4 Luiz Pessoa5

1 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Philosophy & Berlin School of Mind and Brain

3 Macquarie University, Philosophy Department

4 University of Groningen, Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences

5 University of Maryland, Department of Psychology and Maryland Neuroimaging Center

Everything is interaction.

– Alexander von Humboldt (1803)

Abstract
This paper argues for a shift in focus in psychology towards dynamic processes. It first draws on
Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science to theoretically develop psychological phenomena as
emergent from interactions between embodied experience and sociocultural context. The paper,
then, employs Complex Systems Theory to explain the intricacies of psychological processes and
shows how they influence neural dynamics. The proposed approach emphasises the interactional
processes underlying psychological phenomena and bridges the gap between different levels of
abstraction in cognitive science.

Keywords: Psychological Experience, Interactional Processes, Enculturation, Embodiment,

Complex Systems Theory, Dynamical Systems Theory, Radical Enactivism.

Introduction
One would be hard-pressed to conjure a phenomenon of psychology that is not an exemplar
of a complex, dynamic system. Scarcely a phenomenon of interest to psychology exists that
is not imbued with nested interconnected and contextual dependencies, that is the very object
of psychological inquiry. Psychology is a field of inquiry that aims to elucidate individuals’
experiences and reports of their interactions with the world. One of the objectives of psychology
is to offer descriptive and explanatory accounts of the observable phenomenon in the world,
thereby coalescing with the primary aims of empirical sciences.

1
Psychology, which detached itself from its philosophical origins in the late 19th century, embraced
a naturalized version of Descartes’ dualism, which continues to be prevalent in mainstream psy-
chology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy (Barnes, 2023). This approach identifies the mind with
the brain and its immutable states (Churchland and Sejnowski, 1990), computations (Turing,
1936; Fodor, 1983; Sprevak and Colombo, 2020), and functions (Putnam, 1960; Cao, 2022),
leading to an overemphasis on neurocognitive processes at the expense of psychological states
and their interconnected contexts in a mutually defining relationship. Consequently, the field
of cognitive science becomes increasingly compartmentalised and has lost sight of its original
interdisciplinary focus, as noted by Núñez and colleagues (2019).

The dominance of (post)positivism in contemporary research can limit the potential of qualitative
research and result in questionable quality (Braun and Clarke, 2023, p. 2). In psychology, the
emphasis should be on good theorizing, including theorizing about the method, rather than
the quest for an ideal theory (Haig, 2008; 2020; Cresswell, 2020; Borsboom et al., 2021). The
object of study in psychology is the generation of individual meanings, and a heavily positivist
stance can lead to a lack of an object of study. Further, psychology researchers are situated in
the cultural practices of a scientific community’s worldview when theorizing. For example, by
taking part in scientific communities whose grounding assumptions rely on metaphors: which
importantly, are “a certain worldview – that influences the questions we ask, the analyses we
perform, and how we interpret the results" (Beer, 2014, emphasis added); which van Geert and
de Ruiter (2022) conceptualise as a praxis:

knowledge is not just an accumulation of simple facts. It is the product of a vast and moving
collection of institutions, lecturers, and researchers, as well as the methodological tools, rules,
values, and norms that bind them together as acting members of a discipline. . . [i.e.] a dynamic
network of people and their activity as a praxis. (van Geert and de Ruiter, 2022, p. X).

Gernigon et al. (2022) propose a shift in psychological research from probabilistic causality to
process causality, emphasizing the importance of rigorous theorizing about methodology. They
argue that psychological phenomena are intricate patterns that emerge from non-decomposable
and non-isolable complex processes subject to idiosyncratic nonlinear dynamics. The authors
contend that these processual characteristics pose a challenge to conventional statistical repro-
ducibility and that researchers must reconsider what can and should be replicated, which are
the psychological processes themselves and the markers of their complexity and dynamics.

Drawing on the foundational work of Port and Van Gelder (1995), this paper argues for a shift
in psychological inquiry towards dynamic processes in understanding psychological phenomena.
Section 1 of the paper draws from Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science to argue that psy-
chological phenomena are emergent from a complex interplay between embodied experience and
sociocultural context. Section 2 employs Complex Systems Theory to elucidate the intricate
dynamics of psychological processes. Finally, section 3 applies CST to understand how psy-
chological phenomena and neural dynamics reciprocally influence one another. This approach
emphasises the interactional processes underlying psychological phenomena and bridges levels of
abstraction within cognitive science.

1.The Scope of Psychology

The section argues that psychological phenomena should be understood as a process of becoming,
characterized by changes and shifting relationships, rather than as an assemblage of enduring
entities. This view is influenced by process philosophy - as propounded by Heraclitus, James,

2
Whitehead, and Merleau-Ponty – which sees nature as a perpetual process of metamorphosis
and evolution. More specifically, this section draws on insights from Embodied and Enactive
Cognitive Science (ECogSci)1 to argue that human experience is intimately connected with the
rest of nature as an ongoing process of the living body as a whole and not necessarily tied
to any specific region of the brain. In particular, psychological processes are complex interac-
tions between embodied experience and its cultural interpretation (Oyama, 2000; Tschacher and
Dauwalder, 2003; Smith, 2005; Beer, 2014; Richardson and Chemero, 2014; Candadai et al.,
2019; Grishakova and Poulaki, 2019; Millhouse, Moses and Mitchell, 2022).

Psychological processes are not a detached and Cartesian passive reflection of the objective
world, but emerge from the complex interplay between psychological embodied experience and
enculturation. The body is not a passive vessel, but a determinant in shaping perception,
thought, and experience of the world. In phenomenology, ’embodiment’ emphasizes that living
beings are fundamentally embodied and their cognitive life arises from their bodily experiences
and interactions with the world. Therefore, psychological experience is not a disembodied passive
reflection of objective reality, but a fundamentally enculturated emergent embodied process
Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Barrett, 2011; Gallagher, 2017; 2020; Fuchs, 2017).

In the philosophy of psychology, radical enactivism,2 fundamentally inspired by Ludwig Wittgen-

stein’s thought, accentuates the significance of the sociocultural context in shaping an individ-
ual’s identity and comprehension of the world (Wittgenstein, 1953; Hutto and Myin, 2013; 2017;
Hutto et al., 2021). Psychological processes arise from intricate and irreversible dynamic interac-
tions within the lived experience of an embodied entity in a sociocultural environment (Bickhard,
2012). In ontological terms, psychologically embodied experience should not be understood in
realist or idealist terms (i.e. mind-independent, isolable, stable, and enduring ‘thing’). Psycho-
logical experience is not a collection of things, it’s a network of processes. Because psychologically
embodied experience is a spatiotemporal process, it is not something hidden beneath or behind a
“reality" of things; but a network of subjective processes; which is what Wittgenstein meant with
the famous quote “[t]he world is my world" (TLP 5.641). To put it more precisely, psychological
experience is not hidden from the subject, but right ‘there’ emerging in the complex interface
between embodiment and enculturation; such that “[t]here isn’t a further process hidden behind,
which is the real understanding, accompanying and causing these manifestations in the way that
toothache causes one to groan" (PG, p. 80). Psychological processes are, thereby, not stored
away in a ‘black box’; rather they are the dynamics of someone’s world directly experienced from
an embodied perspective.

The psychological experience emerges from the activity of cyclical bottom-up and top-down
causality underlying complex processes (processes that are experientially given to the person
and not hidden in some black box), whereas, in its turn, the emergent psychological experience
conditions or constraints the underlying complex processes (van Geert and de Ruiter, 2022).
Results of empirical or process-based research on self-esteem illustrate precisely this form of the
causal unfolding of psychological development (De Ruiter, Van Geert and Kunnen, 2017).
1
‘E’ Cognitive Science (ECogSci) posits that living beings explore, experience, and ultimately survive in
their environments through basic, embodied forms of cognition that emerge from the dynamics of the organism’s
embodied patterns of interaction with its environment, emphasising the “situated, environment involving embodied
engagements as a means of understanding basic minds" (Hutto and Myin, 2013, p. x). It is worth noting that
ECogSci is a diverse group of approaches, and while they share core features of cognition, they can range from
conservative to radical in relation to representationalism. In this paper we take a radical enactivism stance.
2
Note that, in ECogSci, there are at least two varieties of enactivism: autopoiesis-inspired enactivism (Varela,
Thompson and Rosch, 1991) and Wittgesntein-inspired radical enactivism (Hutto and Myin, 2013; 2017). Because
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Psychology offers key insights for psychology, this paper fundamentally leverages
from radical enactivism. See also Bickhard’s (2009) interactionism theory.

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Because subjects are their present biographical embodied psychological experience, it can be
difficult to discern the networking aspects of the psychological experience. Wittgenstein articu-
lates this as follows: “[t]he aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because
of their simplicity and familiarity." (PI, 129). One’s psychological experience is the inevitable
perspectival standpoint by which the world is what it is. Similar to the way in which one cannot
see their own eye or visual field, the existence of psychological experience is dependent on the
existence of the subject who experiences it (TLP 5.633). While the networking aspects of the
psychological experience may not be immediately observable by a subject, they are not inten-
tionally concealed. If psychological experiences are considered hidden, it is because others lack
the necessary personal history to understand them, and therefore cannot share the individual’s
perspective. This perspective enables the individual to experience the world as “my world." (TLP
5.641). Understanding others has been theorised under a mind-reading umbrella (i.e. Theory of
Mind, Theory-Theory or Simulation Theory) defending it as a mental state ascription to others.
Because agents are supposed to be encapsulated from their (social) environments, they must
engage, from a spectator stance, in intellectual theorising about what might be the likely case
of events (Goldman and Jordan, 2013; Heyes and Frith, 2014).

Psychological experience is akin to the scenario where one speaks and nobody can hear them.
In this case, the phenomenon of inner speech is concealed more profoundly than any physical
process occurring within the body (RPP, II, 574). While not all aspects of psychological experi-
ence are necessarily noticed nor intentionally concealed, some events may trigger one’s attention
to notice a certain psychological experience, to think and reason about it. The interpretation
of psychological experience is also situated in the intricate relations inherent in embodied encul-
turation.

From this follows that there is no requirement for the psychological phenomenon to be (introspec-
tively) inferred, and even less so, from a disembodied source. Rather, psychological phenomena
and the sociocultural contexts in which they appear are codependent components of a network
shaping the field of existence. Given that the interpretation of a psychological experience is
inexorably emergent within a cultural milieu, a psychological experience cannot be deemed ob-
jectively false/true or correct/incorrect. The psychological phenomenon does not come down
to (objective) correctness conditions. Rather, cultural practices, such as values, beliefs, rituals,
ways of thinking, or language, serve as a framework for determining what is deemed reasonable
or unreasonable, skilled or unskilled, appropriate or inappropriate, and healthy or unhealthy.
Cultural practices, as shared meanings, give form and purpose to psychological experience and
its interpretation (Bickhard, 2009; Allen and Bickhard, 2011). According to Wittgenstein, cul-
tural practices play a crucial role in shaping and interpreting psychological experiences, beyond
the realm of intellectual ideas and opinions. Because psychological processes as well as social
cognition processes are adjudicated against a sociocultural background, they do not hold intrinsic
value (Anscombe, 1978).

In conclusion, a nuanced understanding of the intricate interplay between psychological experi-

ence and its interpretation requires an appreciation of the complex socio-cultural dynamics that
underlie these processes. The comprehension of the relationship between embodied psychological
experience and its subjective interpretation, as conveyed through subjective reports emerging
within a cultural milieu, is crucial in psychological inquiry, regardless of the diverse goals ranging
from constructing theoretical models to designing applied interventions. With this conceptual
clarification, the next section applies complex systems theory to psychology research as a means
to draw the intricate patterns at the interplay between subjective experience and its articula-
tion. The next section employs complex systems theory as a framework suited to understanding
psychological phenomena as defined in this section.

4
2. Complexity Principles in Psychology
Scarcely there is a phenomenon of scientific interest that is more complex, i.e. imbued with
nested interconnected and contextual dependencies, than the very object of psychological in-
quiry. It is worth noting that standard dynamic systems models, or system dynamics models,
have limited explanatory power when it comes to truly emergent and novel properties. Such
models are typically too simplistic to capture the complexity of emergent phenomena, which
are characterised by novelty and surprise. However, despite their limitations, standard dynamic
systems models are capable of generating surprising results and predictions that exceed the scope
of linear or statistical models, which are based on a simple linear summation of contributions.
While the latter models may be intricate, they lack complexity in terms of the interwoven dy-
namic properties where interaction properties dominate over component properties. Complexity
models, we posit, retain complexity displayed in novelty and surprise.

Complexity is well suited to do justice to the subjectivity of psychological phenomenon (as op-
posed to thinking of it in terms of abstract, disembodied inference) as epistemic means of analysis.
Contrary to the common view that modelling should only be undertaken once ample data have
been collected, dynamic models that exhibit phenomena like self-organisation and the emergence
of unexpected properties should be regarded as the inspiration for research and theory formation.
These models serve as “intuition pumps" and frameworks that promote understanding.

Complex systems can manifest in various domains such as nature, society, and technology, char-
acterised by self-organisation, adaptation, emergence, and nonlinear dynamics (Mitchell and
Newman, 2002; Goldstein, 2011; Ladyman, Lambert and Wiesner, 2013; Ladyman and Wiesner,
2020).3 In cognitive science, CST is employed in the study of cognition in general (Thelen and
Smith, 1994), and specifically language development (Van Geert, 2008; “Van Geert and Verspoor,
2015; Hiver and Al-Hoorie, 2019); cognitive development (Van Geert, 2011; Serra and Zanarini,
2013); meaning making in identity development (Kunnen & Bosma, 2000; Van der Gaag, et
al., 2020; Branje et al., 2021); self-esteem (de Ruiter et al., 2018); adolescent development
(Lichtwarck-Aschoff and van Geert, 2004); dyadic play (Hesp Hesp, Steenbeek and van Geert,
2019); risk behaviours in adolescence (Schuhmacher, Ballato & Van Geert, 2014); scaffolding in
educational processes (Steenbeek and van Geert, 2020; Menninga et al., 2021); learning-teaching
trajectories (Steenbeek and van Geert, 2013).

In this section, we utilise complexity to explicate how psychological phenomena as a complex

system; i.e. how these phenomena emerge from a multifaceted interplay between socioculturally
situated embodied psychological experience and its interpretation (Fig. 1).
3
Considering that this paper is part of a special issue on Dynamical Systems Theory, we will assume that the
reader has basic acquaintance with the essential terminology.

5
Figure 1. This figure shows the reciprocal influences between sociocultural settings and psychological processes, wherein
key components involve iterative processes (depicted by the dotted arrows, indicative of a process of auto-causality) that
are mutually coupled (yielding cyclical graphs, as opposed to the acyclical graphs employed in many of the causal models
employed in psychology). A. highlights that emergent phenomena and cultural practices arise from the dynamic interplay
within a cultural community. Similarly, B. psychological processes emerge from the interplay between embodied psycho-
logical experience and its interpretation or reports. The patterns of behaviour and belief arising from these interactions
can have stabilizing or destabilizing effects on the system, and the process is iterative and mutually coupled. This figure is
adapted from van Geert and de Ruiter (2022).

Psychological processes can be understood as emergent properties that arise from the complex
interactions between an embodied psychological experience and its interpretation. Psychological
processes unfold within a state space, i.e. a set of all possible states that a system can occupy. The
socioculturally situated development of a system, i.e. a sequence of states that a psychological
system moves through over time in a specific (sociocultural) space: it is the trajectory of the
system.

Trajectory
Trajectory analysis allows us to make some predictions about future states the system will
visit. The trajectory displays the developmental states of the system in terms of attractors
(regions that the system is more likely to return to) or repellers (states that an individual
will try to avoid). Attractor or repeller stable points are not objectively positive or negative,
but only meaningful in the light of a trajectory. Stable points can be viewed, for example, as
activities or emotional states; which in light of a specific trajectory can be seen as a developmental
rate, i.e. how the individual’s behaviour or mental processes are changing. For example, a
child’s language development over a period, utilising language variables like vocabulary size,
grammatical complexity, and fluency in the state space. The sequence of states that reflect
the child’s language system reveals significant patterns or developmental stages that offer vital
insights (Van Geert, 2008; Geert and Verspoor, 2015; Hiver and Al-Hoorie, 2019).

Trajectory analysis can also be employed in psychopathology, i.e. analysing stable states allows
us to understand the patterns of behaviour over time, predict future behaviour, and identify and
develop personalised interventions that could help individuals shift to more positive or adaptive
trajectories as well as develop plans for preventive mental health (van Geert and Steenbeek,
2010; Wichers et al., 2019; Hayes and Andrews, 2020; Olthof, et al., 2020; Wright and Woods,
2020; Fried, Flake and Robinaugh, 2022; Hipólito et al., 2022; Lunansky et al., 2022; White and
Hipólito, 2023). As the system develops (i.e. trajectory), it is open to perturbation, i.e. a small
change or disturbance that affects its psychological state.

Perturbation
A perturbation can be internal, i.e. a system’s internal interactive components or external, i.e.
environmental stressors. Perturbations can have different effects on complex systems depending
on their magnitude, timing, and location. In some cases, perturbations can cause the system to

6
shift into a new state or attractor, resulting in a qualitative change in its behaviour or properties.
Perturbations are, likewise, not objectively positive or negative, but a scientific interpretation
tool that is only meaningful within a trajectory. Within a trajectory and a particular landscape
of attractors and repellers specifies a person’s momentary state space.

A perturbation will have a significant effect if it occurs in the vicinity of a repeller, but if
that occurs in the vicinity of a wide and deep attractor state, its effects will be immediately
counteracted by all the forces — i.e. the dynamics — that constitute and maintain the deep
attractor state. Since interventions, such as clinical or educational interventions can also be
interpreted as perturbations (lengthy ones for that matter), the notion of perturbation in addition
to the properties of the attractor landscape can lead to considerably more interesting views on
the nature of intervention and intervention success than the standard approach according to
which the causal effect of an intervention resides in the intervention itself (van Geert and de
Ruiter, 2022). 4

For example, a perturbation can be applied by a psychotherapy intervention to trigger positive

behavioural change, i.e. fluctuations that disturb specific patterns underlying psychopathological
symptoms towards a critical transition to healthy stability (Hipólito et al., 2022). In other cases,
perturbations can have a destabilising effect on the system, for example, losing a loved one,
leading to fluctuations or oscillations that prevent the system from returning to its original
state, thereby leading a system to undergo a cascade of changes that lead to a regime shift or a
critical transition.

Critical Transition
A critical transition denotes an abrupt and qualitative alteration in a system’s properties or
behaviour that arises when the system approaches a tipping or bifurcation point. They are
characterised by rapid and irreversible changes in the system’s properties or behaviour, which
can lead to the emergence of new patterns, structures, or dynamics. Critical transitions can
be understood by the principles of thermodynamics in physics, where the behaviour of open
systems is critically influenced by the interaction with the environment. The flow of these
interactions cannot be replicated in the opposite direction due to the irreversible nature of
time (Von Bertalanffy, 1950; 1973; Ptaszyński and Esposito, 2019; Pokrovskii, 2020; Rovelli,
2022a). This means that once an open system (an agent) has responded to critical changes
in its (sociocultural) environment, it cannot simply revert to its previous state. The exchange
has irreversibly altered the system (agent), and it must continue to evolve in tandem with its
(sociocultural) environment.

Examples can be found in personality development, but also in mental health conditions such
as depression or addiction. In personality development, for example, a person who has been
introverted and shy may suddenly become more outgoing and confident after starting college or
a new job. Alternatively, a person who has been outgoing and confident may suddenly become
more introverted and withdrawn after experiencing a major loss or setback (Fajkowska, 2015;
Jayawickreme et al., 2021). In depression, a person who has been experiencing mild symptoms
of depression may suddenly develop severe symptoms after a stressful event, such as a divorce or
job loss. Alternatively, a person who has been experiencing severe symptoms may suddenly start
to improve after beginning treatment or receiving social support (Hayes, 1996; Cramer et al.,
2016). In addiction, a person who has been in recovery for several years may suddenly relapse
after experiencing a traumatic event or encountering a triggering situation. Alternatively, a
person who has been struggling with addiction may suddenly achieve long-term recovery after
4
This point relates to the classical issue of intervention causality or manipulation causality, (Woodward, 2005),
versus process causality.

7
receiving effective treatment or support (Apostolopoulos et al., 2018); Trauma, e.g. a person
who has been coping well with their trauma may suddenly experience a resurgence of symptoms
after encountering a triggering situation or experiencing a setback. Alternatively, a person who
has been struggling with their trauma may suddenly experience a breakthrough in their recovery
after receiving effective treatment or support (Wilson, 2004);

Critical transitions are not themselves intrinsically positive or negative but relative to a spe-
cific socioculturally situated trajectory, which reciprocally influences patterns of behaviour as
stabilising or destabilising effects on the system as they can either reinforce certain behaviours
and beliefs or bring about new patterns of behaviour and belief, i.e. psychological processes.
Consequently, a psychologically embodied experience is irreversibly determined by a biography
of socioculturally situated psychological processes.

The issue of critical transitions goes beyond tipping points, as it also involves self-organising
criticality. When tension builds up in a system, it will resist increasing tension until it reaches
a critical point, at which point the tension is released through a series of irreversible events
leading to a new equilibrium. Critical points may lead to small or large irreversible changes,
with the magnitude of changes in complex systems typically following power law distributions.
While power law distributions are ubiquitous in nature and social/psychological phenomena,
mainstream behavioural sciences still rely on normal or Gaussian distributions resulting from
independent influences. While mainstream behavioural sciences still rely on normal or Gaussian
distributions resulting from independent influences, power law distributions are ubiquitous in
nature and social/psychological phenomena.

In conclusion, the use of CST as a formal framework enables the capture of complex, interdepen-
dent scales involved in psychological behaviour as inherently time- and context-dependent and
dynamic processes (as opposed to stable, isolable, enduring things). CST offers a comprehensive
approach to examining behaviour patterns that occur across nested levels of a system. The next
section scales down to brain dynamics, explaining it as an open system that is fundamentally
part of and shaped by multiscale psychological life.

3. Patterns all the way down: from Psychological to Neurocognitive processes

Neuroscience has historically studied individual brain regions in isolation or reduced cognition to
isolated modular components, which has allowed for computational tractability but downplayed
the role of psychological experience and overlooked the brain as an open, dynamical system
(Favela, 2021; Friston et al., 2021; Hipólito, 2022; Safron, Klimaj and Hipólito, 2022; Pessoa,
2023). This reductionist approach risks falling into the trap of Goodhart’s law and overlooks the
complexity and interconnectedness of the brain within a multiscale network that fundamentally
involves psychological behaviour (Pessoa, Medina and Desfilis, 2022).

How does psychological development influence the brain’s activity in terms of communication
and interactivity we find in the nervous system? To address this question, it is useful to consider
three principles of brain organisation: a) Massive combinatorial anatomical connectivity; b)
Highly distributed functional coordination; and c) Networks/circuits as functional units.

a) Massive combinatorial anatomical connectivity

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Anatomical pathways are dominated by short-distance connections, such that the majority of
the projections to a given cortical locus originate from within 1.5-2.5 millimetres (Markov et al.,
2011). Nevertheless, processing in the brain is not local. Computational analyses of anatomical
pathways suggested that the cortex operates as a “small-world" (Sporns and Zwi, 2004), an
organisation that supports enhanced signal-propagation speed and synchronizability between
parts, among other properties (Watts and Strogatz, 1988; Barabási and Albert, 1999). In small-
world networks, while most of the connectivity is local, a modest amount of long-range random
connections suffices to endow networks with these properties.

The most important insight of these analyses is that it is possible for a system with mostly local
connections, but some mid- and long-range connections, to display “unexpected" large-scale
system properties. It now appears that the cortex is more densely connected than previously
believed; by some estimates, 60 per cent of the possible connections between pairs of areas are
present (Markov et al., 2013). If results such as these are confirmed, the organisation of the cortex
is not a small-world, it is more like a “tiny world", an organisation that efficiently supports the
interaction of diverse types of signals across disparate sectors.

But cortical connectivity is only one ingredient contributing to the brain’s anatomical organisa-
tion, and the traditional focus on the cortex neglects major connectional systems that determine
the overall neuroarchitecture—including loops via the basal ganglia, as well as connectional
systems centred on the thalamus, hypothalamus, basolateral amygdala, and cerebellum. The
emerging picture is one of massive interconnectivity, leading to combinatorial pathways between
parts; one can go from point A to point B in multiple ways. Combined, connectivity systems
spanning the entire neuroaxis (from the medulla to the cortex) support both broadcasting and
integration of diverse signals linked to the external and internal worlds.

Such crisscrossing connectional systems support the interaction and integration of signals that
are typically associated with standard mental domains, including emotion, motivation, percep-
tion, cognition, and action but, critically, in a manner that does not abide by putative boundaries
between these categories (Pessoa, 2022). This general architecture supports a degree of com-
putational flexibility that enables animals to cope successfully with complex and ever-changing
environments. Evidence shows, for example, that brain connectivity is modulated by learning
and the environment, i.e. structural language connectome is shaped by the mother tongue,
during childhood (Wei et al., 2023)

The overall architecture may produce circuits with local specificity while attaining large-scale
sensitivity, a type of global-within-local design, which likely contributes to more sophisticated,
plastic, and context-sensitive behaviours (Pessoa, Medina, and Desfilis, 2022).

b) Highly distributed functional coordination

The complexity of anatomical pathways allows signals to flow across the brain in a staggeringly
large set of ways. Anatomy provides a backbone that constrains function, but the structure-
function relationship is anything but simple when one considers the abundance of bidirectional
connections and loop-like organization (as in the basal ganglia), combined with excitation, in-
hibition, and non-linearities. In this manner, the anatomy supports a large range of functional
interactions, namely, particular relationships between signals in disparate parts of the brain (for
example, they might fire coherently). For one, the anatomy will support the efficient communica-
tion of signals, even when strong direct pathways are absent, such as the functional coordination
between signals in the amygdala and lateral PFC, although the two are not strongly connected

9
physically. A large body of data shows that the relationship between signals in disparate parts of
the brain is not determined by structural pathways in a straightforward manner (Pessoa, 2014).

c) Networks/circuits as functional units

In a highly interconnected system, to understand the function, we need to shift away from
thinking in terms of individual brain regions: The network itself is the functional unit, not the
brain area. Processes that support behaviour are not implemented by an individual area but
depend on the interaction of multiple areas, which are dynamically recruited into multi-region
assemblies. Such functional networks are based on the relationships between signals across
disparate parts of the brain.

Frequently, functional networks are studied as if brain parts belong to a single network, namely,
the overall space is broken into disjoint clusters. However, social, biological, and technological
networks display important overlapping organisations (Palla et al., 2005). Support for this
type of functional organisation in the brain comes from a growing number of studies that are
uncovering highly overlapping organisations (Najafi et al., 2016; Yeo et al., 2014; Faskowitz et
al., 2020). If brain areas can belong to multiple networks, what determines the strength of a
region’s affiliation to a specific network? Context plays a pivotal role: region A will participate
strongly in network N1 during a certain context C1 but will be more strongly linked with network
N2 during context C2. Put another way, the processes carried out by an area will depend on its
network affiliations (that is, the regions it clusters with) at a given time. Overlap and dynamics
support a view in which networks do not consist of fixed collections of regions but instead are
made of coalitions of regions that form and dissolve to meet the system’s needs. Network models
of, for example, performance and psychopathology show individual variability associated with
the dynamics of processes (Alonso Martínez et al., 2020; van Geert and van Dijk, 2021). Neural
regional interactions vary according to the overall system’s dynamics.

The brain is a complex system with large-scale properties and functional interactions that depend
on its network affiliations. To fully understand it, we must break down boundaries between
the brain, organism, and psychological experience, and foster interdisciplinary collaboration.
Only then can we achieve cognitive science’s original interdisciplinary goal of bridging levels of
abstraction for a unified understanding of cognition.

Conclusion

This paper advocated for a shift in psychological inquiry towards dynamic processes, which
are understood as emergent from interactions between embodied experience and sociocultural
context. The paper has drawn on Embodied and Enactive Cognitive Science to develop this the-
oretical framework and employs Complex Systems Theory to explain the intricate dynamics of
psychological processes and their influence on neural activity. This approach highlighted the in-
teractional processes underlying psychological phenomena and bridges the gap between different
levels of abstraction in cognitive science. Ultimately, this paper motivates the importance of un-
derstanding the interdependence of psychological and neurological processes for a comprehensive
understanding of the complexity of the brain.

10
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