Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas

What does it mean to be human? To contribute to the quest for the human spark, I study our species' unparalleled abilities for weaving networks of meaning that integrate disparate perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and actions into new wholes.

Imagining future or counterfactual scenarios from disperse memories and perceptions, recombining old ideas to create new ones, or manipulating materials and environments to ground and expand thought and action: these and other species-defining behaviors stem from the integrative capacities of the human mind. Perhaps the most crucial integrative feat is the coordination of manifold body movements and voice inflections for complex cooperation and communication. The intricate patterns of human multimodal interaction give rise to language, music, oral and written verbal art, and many other manifestations of human meaning. The ever-evolving cultures and technologies of humankind, unattainable for any other living being in Earth's history, are all based on this drive to integrate the elusive variability of experience into new mental worlds.

How does the human mind go from scattered feathers to Daedalus' wings, flying out of the labyrinth rather than merely finding a niche in it?

With the rest of the team at the Daedalus Lab, I combine methods from the humanities and the sciences to study key integrative phenomena of the human mind: How do we create our concepts, emotions, or aesthetics by building on the basics of perception and action? How do we structure the multimodal flow of communication? How do we stabilize the flashing patterns of our mind through bodily motion and material manipulation? How do we develop all those patterns of integration in cultural diachrony, adapting them to the varying goals and contexts of everyday interactions, social and political goals, artistic and scientific creativity, or cultural tradition?

For more about my research, see the Daedalus Lab projects. For more on big-data research on multimodal communication, see the Red Hen Lab.