Neuron

A paper just published in Neuron — authored by Damasio, Iacoboni, and colleagues — makes a significant argument: AI systems are missing not just bodies, but internal self-regulation. No persistent states tracking fatigue, uncertainty, or need. No inside-out regulation of behavior over time.
They call it the “body gap.” They’re right that it exists.
But the paper stops one layer short.
Internal states without a governing architecture are more variables, not coherence. And if emotions are not discrete events but eigenstates — stable configurations a dynamic system settles into — then the design question isn’t “can the system detect emotional states?” It’s “can the system develop an attractor landscape that resonates with another’s?”
That is a different problem. And it requires a different framework.
This post extends the Neuron paper’s argument, introduces the coherence architecture it points toward, and answers its three open research questions directly.