Alejandra Ciria, Ph.D.
Associate Researcher (Full-time), Department of Computer Science
Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas (IIMAS), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Former Head, Embodied Cognition Laboratory (LabCoCo)
Member, Cognitive Robotics Laboratory, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (UAEM)
My research lies at the intersection of embodied cognition, artificial intelligence, and cognitive robotics, following an interdisciplinary approach that integrates experimental methods, computational modeling, and theoretical perspectives from the cognitive sciences. The Embodied Cognition Laboratory’s work focuses on understanding how biological and artificial systems process multimodal information, predict, and adapt to their environments through the acquisition of knowledge grounded in sensorimotor experience.
The IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) brings together researchers from diverse fields, including computer science, robotics, psychology, and neuroscience, to explore how humans and other animals learn and develop, and how these processes both shape and are influenced by advances in robotics and machine learning.
In 2026, the conference will take place at Kyoto University, a globally recognized center for interdisciplinary research. Located in the historic city of Kyoto, the event will provide an exceptional setting for fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration and advancing our understanding of learning and development in humans, animals, and machines.
The Embodied Cognitive Sciences web page is a collaborative project that started in 2021 with my students from the School of Psychology, UNAM. The main aim of this project is to share our passion for analyzing, discussing, and trying to understand cognition from an embodied, enactive, extended, embedded, grounded, and situated perspective.
* Página web sobre Ciencias Cognitivas Corporizadas completamente en español:
1er_Seminario_Programa_con_Memorias.pdfLos días 29 y 30 de enero de 2026 se realizó el 1er Seminario de Robótica Cognitiva y Adquisición del Conocimiento, un espacio interdisciplinario dedicado al análisis de la cognición y la adquisición del conocimiento desde perspectivas biogénicas, corporizadas y computacionales.
Durante el seminario se abordaron temas como cognición basal, bioelectricidad, codificación predictiva, redes neuromórficas, cognición social, percepción como interfaz y robótica evolutiva, destacando la autoorganización, la temporalidad y la viabilidad como principios clave para el diseño de agentes artificiales más plausibles y adaptativos. El evento fomentó el diálogo académico y la generación de nuevas líneas de investigación en ciencias cognitivas y robótica cognitiva.
English
1st Seminar on Cognitive Robotics and Knowledge Acquisition
On January 29–30, 2026, the 1st Seminar on Cognitive Robotics and Knowledge Acquisition was held as an interdisciplinary forum focused on understanding cognition and knowledge acquisition from biogenic, embodied, and computational perspectives.
The seminar addressed topics such as basal cognition, bioelectricity, predictive coding, neuromorphic neural networks, social cognition, perception as interface, and evolutionary robotics, emphasizing self-organization, temporality, and viability as key principles for designing more plausible and adaptive artificial agents. The event promoted academic dialogue and the development of new research directions in cognitive science and cognitive robotics.
Bit A Bit es un proyecto hecho por y para alumnas de la Licenciatura en Inteligencia Artificial del CInC de la UAEM. El objetivo de este proyecto es generar un espacio en donde las mujeres en la ciencia nos acompañemos y nos ayudemos en este camino.
14/10/2025
14:00-16:00 hrs dentro del CInC, UAEM
El DIA CEIDE son transmisiones mensuales para hablar sobre la Inteligencia Artificial y su uso en entornos educativos, en especial en la UNAM.
07/10/2025
17:00-19:00 hrs
09/04/2025
17:00-19:00 hrs
Para más información sobre este conversatorio y los siguientes entra a: www.psicolideres.com/psigen
October 24, 2024
14:00-16:00 hrs
Cognición Basal y Código Bioeléctrico (Basal Cognition and the Bioelectric Code)
Organizado por estudiantes de la Licenciatura de la Facultad de Psicología, UNAM.
Facultad de Psicología, edificio A, aula A101.
Neuroarquitectura y otros estudios cognitivos aplicables al diseño arquitectónico.
April 25, 2024
Online Conference: Percepción del espacio y posibilidades de acción (Perception of Space and Action Possibilities)
Posgrado de Arquitectura, Facultad de Arquitectura, UNAM.
October 20, 2023
12:00 hrs
Auditorio del IIMAS, Circuito Escolar, Ciudad de México.
September 20, 2023
10:00 hrs
Auditorio Dra. Silvia Macotela, Facultad de Psicología, UNAM.
Our weekly journal club is organized by the Cognitive Robotics Lab in collaboration with our Embodied Cognition Lab, it is open to the public and takes place on the Zoom platform.
If you are interested in attending, please send an e-mail to:
robotica.cognitiva-at-uaem.mx
We warmly invite you to submit your research to our Special Issue on "World Models and Predictive Coding in Robotics" in Advanced Robotics! The submission deadline is September 31, 2022. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
The scope of the issue can be accessed here: World Models and Predictive Coding in Robotics
Web page of the Special Issue (under construction)
Dra. Alejandra Ciria de la Facultad de Psicología de la UNAM, Dr. Edgar Tafoya de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de la UNAM, y el Dr. Bruno Lara del Centro de Investigación en Ciencias de la UAEM.
Fiesta del Libro y la Rosa 2023 UNAM Resistir con la Palabra: Utopías Posibles, sede Cuernavaca.
Museo Universitario de Arte Indígena Contemporáneo, el 21 de abril, con una duración de 1:30 horas.
Friday, April 21, 2023 (13:10 - 14:30 hrs, CT)
"Las sensaciones no se crean ni se destruye, solo se transforman...¿en el cerebro?"
Wednesday, September 28, 2022 (17:00 - 18:00 hrs, CT)
Foro de Química del UNIVERSUM
Dra. Alejandra Ciria
Laboratorio de Psicolongüística, Facultad de Psicología
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Wednesday, September 28, 2022 (17:00 - 18:00 hrs, CT)
Predicciones Corporizadas:
Adquisición del conocimiento y controversias en torno a su representación.
Dra. Alejandra Ciria
Winner of the best presentation “Blankies” sponsored by Nested Minds Network
Culture exploits the acquisition of meaningful content by crafting regimes of shared attention, determining what is relevant, valuable, and salient. Culture changes the field of relevant social affordances worthy of being acted upon in a context-sensitive manner. When relevant affordances are highly weighted, their salience increases the probability of it being enacted, and as a consequence, their associated prediction error is minimized. This process is known as active inference. In the digital era, individuals need to infer the action-related attributes of digital cues, here characterized as digital affordances. The digital affordances of social media platforms are of particular interest here. By their own nature, these are salient because they are related to social interactions and relevant social cues. However, the problem around social network platforms is that they are not equivalent to situated social interactions because their structure is built, mediated, and defined by third-parties with diverse interests. The third-parties behind the social media platforms are using the same mechanism exploited by culture to manipulate the shared patterns of attention. Moreover, these social media platforms are deliberately designed to be hyper-stimulating, making them dangerously rewarding and increasingly addictive. As we will show, the outcome is a growing risk of our online social interactions disrupting our long-term adaptivity. This appropriation, for economic purposes, is an issue of greater importance, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic brought deep global changes pushing societies to an online digital way of life. In this paper, we examine digital instrumental actions as well as digital epistemic actions afforded by social media in light of the prediction error dynamics they might elicit to their users. This paper aims to analyze, under the active inference framework, how the field of relevant affordances is changing as a product of the use of social network platforms. Specifically, how social network platforms are changing the patterns of attention, affecting the way beliefs are updated, how social norms are learned, and how self-identity is built. Changes in the field of relevant affordances as a product of economic purposes may be putting at risk our context-sensitive grip on a rich, dynamic and varied field of relevant affordances.
Jueves 7 de octubre 2021 a las 17:30h
Participan: Jaime Urrutia Fucugauchi (UNAM), Margarita Flores (INMEDIA), Dionisio Meade García de León (Fundación UNAM) y Especialistas invitados Dr. Bruno Lara Guzmán (Responsable del laboratorio de Robótica Cognitiva, UAEM), Dra. Alejandra Ciria Fernández Varela (Inv. de la Facultad de Psicología, UNAM y Colaboradora del laboratorio de Robótica Cognitiva, UAEM), Dr. Luis Alberto Pineda Cortés (Ciencias de la Computación, IIMAS-UNAM).
Documental dirigido por: Jaime Kuri
Transmisión en vivo por TV UNAM @tvunam
El evento también se transmitirá por:
Thursday September 30 (10:00 - 12:00 hrs, CT)
Conectividad funcional y los procesos cognitivos
"La percepción como un problema de inferencia: evidencia de la corteza visual primaria"
Dra. Alejandra Ciria
Ciria, A., Schillaci, G., Pezzulo, G., Hafner, V., & Lara, B. (2021). Predictive Processing in Cognitive Robotics: A Review. Neural Computation, 33(5): 1402–1432. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/neco_a_01383
