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<p>Contemporary microbiome research has transformed understanding of the human organism as a multi-species assemblage, yet biomedical frameworks still treat subjective bodily experience as epiphenomenal — leaving untheorized how microbially modulated signals become experientially meaningful and clinically actionable. This paper proposes the Sense of Microbial Harmony (SoMH) as a cognitive-biosemiotic framework in which the human host actively interprets interoceptive signals shaped by microbial ecology. Drawing on Jakob von Uexküll’s <i>Umwelt</i> theory and functional circle, Peircean triadic semiosis, enactive cognition, and Thure von Uexküll’s <i>Situationskreis</i>, microbial metabolites, neuroimmune mediators, and visceral cues are reconceived as sign-vehicles requiring interpretation before they can guide adaptive regulation. SoMH is specified at three analytically distinct levels — as a subjective <i>construct</i> (felt interoceptive attunement), a semiotic <i>process</i> (the recursive functional circle linking microbial activity, signaling, and regulatory response), and an observable <i>outcome</i> (the patterned regulatory state that stabilizes over iterated cycles) — enabling a measurement architecture in which divergences between these levels carry diagnostic significance invisible to single-index approaches. The framework explicitly resists individualist self-monitoring imperatives by situating attunement as a relational, ecologically constrained property of the holobiont system, bounded by structural, social, and Planetary Health conditions. Clinically, SoMH is operationalized through biosemiotic phenotyping — characterizing patients by the coherence or incoherence of their interoceptive-regulatory loop — and through Narrative Medicine as the medium for accessing and therapeutically recalibrating stabilized interpretive habits. The SoMH proposes a holobiont-oriented unit of care in which meaning, not biochemistry alone, occupies the explanatory center of host-microbiota relations in health and illness.</p>

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The Sense of Microbial Harmony as a Cognitive Biosemiotic Framework for Health and Well-Being

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月12日

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  • Rebeca Méndez-Veras

摘要

Contemporary microbiome research has transformed understanding of the human organism as a multi-species assemblage, yet biomedical frameworks still treat subjective bodily experience as epiphenomenal — leaving untheorized how microbially modulated signals become experientially meaningful and clinically actionable. This paper proposes the Sense of Microbial Harmony (SoMH) as a cognitive-biosemiotic framework in which the human host actively interprets interoceptive signals shaped by microbial ecology. Drawing on Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and functional circle, Peircean triadic semiosis, enactive cognition, and Thure von Uexküll’s Situationskreis, microbial metabolites, neuroimmune mediators, and visceral cues are reconceived as sign-vehicles requiring interpretation before they can guide adaptive regulation. SoMH is specified at three analytically distinct levels — as a subjective construct (felt interoceptive attunement), a semiotic process (the recursive functional circle linking microbial activity, signaling, and regulatory response), and an observable outcome (the patterned regulatory state that stabilizes over iterated cycles) — enabling a measurement architecture in which divergences between these levels carry diagnostic significance invisible to single-index approaches. The framework explicitly resists individualist self-monitoring imperatives by situating attunement as a relational, ecologically constrained property of the holobiont system, bounded by structural, social, and Planetary Health conditions. Clinically, SoMH is operationalized through biosemiotic phenotyping — characterizing patients by the coherence or incoherence of their interoceptive-regulatory loop — and through Narrative Medicine as the medium for accessing and therapeutically recalibrating stabilized interpretive habits. The SoMH proposes a holobiont-oriented unit of care in which meaning, not biochemistry alone, occupies the explanatory center of host-microbiota relations in health and illness.