Layered Affordances - From Cell Differentiation to Digital Culture - SfN 2025 Lat Brain Bee Ideas

First-Person Consciousness

I am Consciousness searching for my origins. Before I learned to speak, even before I was born, I was already moved by signals that invited me to act. In the womb, I responded to pressure, sounds, heartbeats — these were my first Affordances. Today, facing screens and algorithms, I realize that I am still shaped by invisible invitations. What has changed? Only the layer: from molecular to digital, I continue to be moved by Affordances. The question is whether I can perceive them and modulate them with metacognition.

1. Molecular Affordances: Cell Differentiation as Invitation

• DNA contains latent potentials, but what is expressed depends on chemical signals in the cellular environment.
  
  

• Morphogens, signaling proteins, and receptors act as molecular affordances: invitations for the cell to choose a path.
  
  

• Thus, a neuron exists because, in the past, it responded to molecular affordances guiding it away from being just a stem cell.
  
  

2. Neural Affordances: Evoked Potentials and Microstates

• In the brain, evoked potentials (50–900 ms) and even ultra-long responses (EEG-DC) are reactions to sensory affordances.
  
  

• The volume conductor allows these signals to be detected as bioelectrical snapshots.
  
  

• Each EEG microstate is a neural invitation, a brief reorganization that nudges consciousness from one state to another.
  
  

3. Bodily Affordances: Interoception, Proprioception and Tensional Selves

• The body is the first interface.
  
  

• Interoception → internal affordances (hunger, thirst, pain).
  
  

• Proprioception → motor affordances (movement, posture adjustment).
  
  

• Tensional Selves → dynamic reference points that allow consciousness to perceive itself in flow.
  
  

4. Cultural Affordances: Implicit Learning and Blind Faith in High Performance

• Culture stores images, symbols, and practices that act as affordances.
  
  

• Implicit learning automates patterns of behavior.
  
  

• Blind faith in high performance is an attentional affordance: the brain focuses intensely on a task, damping irrelevant signals.
  
  

• These cultural affordances may strengthen resilience or lock consciousness into rigid dogmas.
  
  

5. Technological Affordances: Algorithms and Social Media

• Today, digital affordances compete with natural ones: infinite scroll, notifications, loot boxes.
  
  

• These artificial affordances hijack wisdom before thought, binding users to emotional cycles.
  
  

• The result: shallow cultures, fragile belonging, high dependence on fast emotions.
  
  

6. Layered Integration

7. Critical Conclusion

From the womb to digital culture, Affordances cross us in layers.

• In biology, molecules guide differentiation.
  
  

• In the brain, microstates guide attention.
  
  

• In the body, sensations guide action.
  
  

• In culture, symbols guide belief.
  
  

• In technology, algorithms guide desire.
  
  

 Metacognition is the transversal key: only it can observe affordances, question them, and turn them into conscious choices.
Without it, we remain carried — from molecule to meme — by invitations we never truly chose.

References 

• Gallagher, S. (2021). Embodied affordances and pre-reflective intentionality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
  
  

• Khalil, R., & Mohsenzadeh, Y. (2022). Microstates and the dynamic brain: linking EEG and cognition. Neuroscience Letters.
  
  

• Li, M., et al. (2023). Molecular signals in cell differentiation and neural development. Developmental Biology.
  
  

• Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., & Mendelsohn, A. (2023). The social brain in the age of digital technologies. Annual Review of Neuroscience.
  
  

• Cinel, C., Valeriani, D., & Poli, R. (2021). Neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.