Here we offer a thorough review of the empirical literature on the conditions under which an object, such as a tool or a prosthetic (whether real or virtual), can be experienced as being in some sense a part or extension of one's body. We discuss this literature both from the standpoint of the apparent malleability of our body representations, and also from within the framework of radical embodied cognition, which understands the phenomenon to result not from an alteration to a representation, but rather from the achievement of a certain kind of sensory/motor coupling. We highlight both the tensions between these frameworks, and also areas where they can productively complement one another for future research.

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The free energy principle (FEP) has been presented as a unified brain theory, as a general principle for the self-organization of biological systems, and most recently as a principle for a theory of every thing. Additionally, active inference has been proposed as the process theory entailed by FEP that is able to model the full range of biological and cognitive events. In this

In this article we advance a cutting-edge methodology for the study of the dynamics of plant movements of nutation. Our approach, unlike customary kinematic analyses of shape, period, or amplitude, is based on three typical signatures of adaptively controlled processes and motions, as reported in the biological and behavioral dynamics literature: harmonicity, predictability, and complexity. We illustrate the application of a dynamical methodology to the bending movements of shoots of common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) in two conditions: with and without a support to climb onto. The results herewith reported support the hypothesis that patterns of nutation are influenced by the presence of a support to climb in their vicinity. The methodology is in principle applicable to a whole range of plant movements.

Unlike dominant cognitivist theories that take perceptual learning to be a process of enriching sensory stimulation with previous knowledge, ecological psychologists take it to be an enhancement in the detection of already rich perceptual information. The difference between beginners and experts is that the latter detect better information to support their task goals. While the study of perceptual learning in terms of perceptual information and perceiver–environment interactions is common in the ecological literature, ecological psychology still lacks a story regarding the way perceptual information is detected by perceptual systems and the plasticity of such detection in learning events. In this article, I propose the ecological notion of resonance—along with biophysical resonance, non-linear resonance, and metastability—as a plausible foundation to account for the process of detection of perceptual information both in perceptual events and in events of perceptual learning.