Antonio Reyes

Contemporary consciousness research often oscillates between neural reductionism, computational functionalism, and phenomenological description. This project proposes the concept of the cognitive ecotone as an integrative research framework for modeling conscious experience as an emergent, situated process at the boundary between organismic regulation, neural dynamics, affective-symbolic organization, and environmental structure. Borrowing the ecological notion of an ecotone — a transitional zone where distinct systems interact and generate new forms of organization — we define the cognitive ecotone as the dynamic interface where body, brain, psyche, thought, and world co-produce conscious orientation. The model distinguishes three internal domains: somatic regulation, neurocognitive processing, and affective-symbolic organization; three external domains: natural, social, and digital environments; and a central transitional layer in which thought emerges as representation, communication, and action. The framework is operationalized through an affective engine, a simulation architecture that tracks global indices of internal entropy and external order/chaos, while allowing perturbations across bodily, neural, symbolic, social, and virtual dimensions. Rather than treating consciousness as a property located in a single substrate, the model explores how conscious states stabilize, destabilize, and reorganize through recursive interactions between internal constraints and environmental affordances. The project contributes to consciousness science in three ways. First, it offers a conceptual bridge between active inference, embodied cognition, affective neuroscience, psychodynamic theory, and complex systems thinking. Second, it provides a visual and computational tool for simulating situated transformations of conscious experience. Third, it reframes consciousness as an ecotonal phenomenon: neither purely internal nor merely environmental, but emergent at the living boundary where affect, meaning, regulation, and action become organized.

Antonio José Reyes Royo works across data analysis, clinical reasoning, epidemiology, complex systems, and mental health. Based at IMPRA Consultores, his work focuses on developing applied models that connect psychological theory, systems thinking, and computational tools for clinical and social analysis. His current research proposes the cognitive ecotone as a framework for modeling conscious experience as an emergent process shaped by somatic regulation, neurocognitive dynamics, affective-symbolic organization, and environmental affordances.