The consciousness debate is often trapped between two extremes: either the brain is “just software” (computational functionalism) or consciousness is uniquely biological (biological naturalism). Our paper proposes a third view: biological computationalism. This means that brains do compute, but not like standard digital machines.

We argue that the classical computational picture doesn’t fit the brain, because biological computation has three key traits: it’s hybrid (discrete events inside continuous dynamics), scale-inseparable (no clean split between software and hardware), and metabolically grounded (energy constraints shape how intelligence is organized). In this framework, the brain isn’t merely running an abstract algorithm. Rather, the algorithm is the substrate, unfolding in physical time through fields, flows, and multi-scale dynamics.

This doesn’t mean consciousness belongs only to biology. But it may require biology-like computation, potentially in new non-biological materials. So the challenge of synthetic consciousness isn’t just finding a better algorithm to run—it’s building the kind of matter that matters.

A research team at the Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI) and the Faculty of Medicine at Kanazawa University has developed a new class of engineered extracellular vesicles (EVs) capable of inducing antigen-specific regulatory T cells (Tregs), the immune cells that play a central role in suppressing excessive immune responses. The findings, now published in Drug Delivery, may pave the way for next-generation therapies for autoimmune and allergic diseases, where unwanted immune activation must be precisely controlled.