Tom Froese
Tom Froese is Associate Professor at OIST and head of the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (ECSU). His research develops the embodied and enactive tradition of cognitive science and has produced a novel theoretical framework "irruption theory" for how the subjective mind makes a difference to the living body (Froese, 2026). At ECSU, this framework anchors a linked research program spanning philosophy of mind, human-subject experimentation, computational modeling, and cross-scale empirical analysis.
The central claim of irruption theory is simple but consequential. Because the subjective mind is not reducible to physiology, its involvement can only manifest, from the perspective of physiological inertia, as an external noise term: an irruption of divergent dynamics. This reframes a longstanding tension in embodied cognitive science: the expectation that subjective involvement should show up as measurable benefit in brain and behavior, where experiments often reveal the opposite, a disordering effect. Irruption theory proposes that this disordering is exactly the signature we should expect, and recasts the problem of mental causation as a question about how living systems self-organize despite, and through, such irruptions.
Research program
Making contact with the world: participatory realism
A methodological consequence of the embodied approach is participatory realism. Because the sensorimotor dynamics of perceptual experience loop not only through the body but through the external world, perception involves genuinely making contact with the object. Scientific observation, on this view, is irreducibly self-, other-, and world-involving: a socio-materially augmented process of becoming acquainted with what is observed, continuous with tool-use and object-perception more generally (Froese, 2022).
Active perception and the Enactive Torch
A longstanding claim in the embodied tradition is that perception is active, that the agent's own movements constitute perceptual experience. ECSU tests this claim using a custom-built human-computer interfaces, especially the haptic sensory-substitution interface called the Enactive Torch. Contrary to expectations, voluntary rather than involuntary movement does not necessarily improve perceptual performance. Recent work replicates this finding and points to a more differentiated role for agency: what matters is having the right intention (Sangati et al., 2023).
Shared experience and the Perceptual Crossing Device
If the mind makes genuine contact with the world, two minds can in principle make contact with each other. Agent-based modeling at ECSU has shown how social interaction itself shapes brain and behavior (Resendiz-Benhumea et al., 2021), and the relational concept of experience suggests a stronger possibility: that when "we" share a moment, we participate in the unfolding of one shared experience, supported by an extended functional network arising from inter-brain coupling (Valencia & Froese, 2020). To test this, ECSU has developed the Perceptual Crossing Device, an open-source haptic interface for recording two-participant interaction dynamics alongside dual 64-channel EEG hyperscanning (Estelle et al., 2024). Results so far suggest that subjective involvement may also push inter-brain dynamics toward transient desynchronization rather than synchrony (Froese et al., 2024), and that the relevant coupling dimension of joint engagement is amplitude co-fluctuation rather than phase alignment.
Cross-scale signatures: the 1/e framework
A recent thread extends the program into cross-scale empirics. The 1/e framework proposes that living systems across many scales allocate effort over the same canonical fraction: one over e, approximately 37%, of their work-constraint cycle. Four independent derivations converge on this proportion: optimal stopping, finite-time thermodynamics, information geometry on exponential families, and metastable fragility. Empirical confirmation spans the cardiac duty cycle in very large clinical datasets, cell-division timing, reproductive timing across thousands of species, intrinsic neural timescales, and decision timing in Perceptual Crossing experiments. Taken together, the 1/e framework provides a signature of living systems' optimal allocation of effort and a bridge between irruption theory and the thermodynamic architecture of agency. Manuscripts developing these results are in preparation with collaborators at UNAM, GEOMAR, and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (Leipzig).
Self-organization and the intention-action gap
Irruption theory raises the question of how actions come to align with intentions. There is, in general, an "intention-action gap" that any account of motivated behavior has to bridge (James & Froese, 2025). ECSU's response draws on mathematical models of complex adaptive systems: a simple combination of attractor dynamics, associative learning, and occasional irruption-like state resets is enough to let the system self-organize better coordination and more general behavior (Froese et al., 2023). The upshot is a positive picture of embodied agency: we are justified in trusting our bodies because behavior is shaped by the whole history of our interactions.
A book-length treatment of irruption theory is in preparation.
Building the field
Beyond the research program itself, Froese has spent the past decade building international infrastructure for embodied cognitive science. He founded the International Conference on Embodied Cognitive Science (ECogS) in 2020 and has chaired it since, with the 2026 edition hosted at OIST in November. He served as Editor-in-Chief of Adaptive Behavior from 2017 to 2025, leading the journal that is most closely associated with the behavior-based, situated-cognition tradition. In 2021 he was awarded the International Society for Artificial Life's Outstanding Paper of the Decade (2006-2016) for his contribution to artificial life approaches to AI.
Featured work
A short curated selection as entry points into the research program:
- Froese (2026). Quantifying What Is Efficacious Yet Not Observable: Cognitive Neuroscience's Measurement Problem Has a Solution. Cognitive Science, 50: e70170. - the most recent statement of irruption theory
- Froese (2024). Irruption and absorption: A 'black-box' framework for how mind and matter make a difference to each other. Entropy, 26(4), 288. - the most extended statement of the theoretical framework.
- Froese (2022). Scientific observation is socio-materially augmented perception: Toward a participatory realism. Philosophies, 7(2), 37. - the methodological foundation of the program.
- Estelle et al. (2024). An open-source perceptual crossing device for investigating brain dynamics during human interaction. PLoS One, 19(6), e0305283. - the core empirical infrastructure for two-person interaction research.
- Froese, Loh & Putri (2024). Inter-brain desynchronization in social interaction: A consequence of subjective involvement? Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 18, 809. - a key empirical insight reshaping the inter-brain-synchrony literature.
- Froese, Weber, Shpurov & Ikegami (2023). From autopoiesis to self-optimization: Toward an enactive model of biological regulation. BioSystems, 230, 104959. - the modeling strand linking irruption to self-organization and the thermodynamic architecture of agency.
For the full publication record, see the ECSU Publications page.
Join ECSU
ECSU actively recruits motivated researchers at every career stage who want to help develop a new cognitive science of the embodied, enactive mind. We currently supervise two PhD students and have capacity for two additional students entering in 2026, two in 2027, and one in 2028 (see the Graduate School's PhD Supervision Availability page for current figures).
We welcome applications through the following channels:
- Research interns: fully funded, 6 month placements through the OIST Research Internship (RI) Program. Open to late-undergraduate and master's-level students worldwide; ECSU hosts up to two interns per intake. Current project descriptions can be found on the RI Project Availability page.
- PhD students: fully funded five-year training through the OIST Graduate School, which covers tuition and living stipend for all admitted students. See the OIST PhD Admissions page for application details.
- Postdoctoral researchers: candidates interested in JSPS Fellowships or other externally funded postdoctoral schemes are encouraged to contact the unit early to develop a joint proposal.
- Visiting researchers: self-funded visitors working on topics aligned with ECSU's program are welcome for short or extended stays.
Prospective members are encouraged to get in touch directly with a short statement of interest and CV.
Contact
Research Unit