From Biological Digital Twins to Embodied Digital Continuity: A Research Framework for Whole-Body Computational Modeling

Human digital twins are emerging as dynamic computational representations of individuals constructed from physiological, anatomical, behavioral, clinical, and environmental data. Current systems, however, are predominantly organ-specific, task-specific, or clinically bounded, and relatively few implementations satisfy strong definitions of a digital twin requiring personalization, dynamic updating, and predictive capability.

This paper develops a research framework for extending biological digital-twin methods toward whole-body computational models capable of reproducing selected closed-loop dynamics relevant to embodied cognition. The framework follows from The Human Embodied Intelligence Research Program, in which full-body intelligence is treated as a proposed organism-level construct involving interactions among interoceptive, autonomic, neural, sensorimotor, and environmental processes. If those interactions prove empirically important, a computational representation intended to model embodied intelligence would require more than anatomical reconstruction or a static archive of biological measurements. It would need to represent internal states, update them dynamically, integrate multimodal signals, respond to perturbation, generate actions or predictions, and remain plastic under new conditions.

Three engineering layers are distinguished: multimodal biological capture; dynamic computational embodiment; and longitudinal validation of fidelity, interaction, and plasticity. Contemporary digital-twin research, mechanistic physiological modeling, neuromechanical simulation, wearable sensing, and emerging interoceptive artificial-intelligence frameworks provide partial technological foundations for this agenda. They do not presently constitute a complete whole-body twin.

The term embodied digital continuity is introduced as an operational research concept referring to persistence of validated subject-specific dynamical and behavioral properties across computational updating and interaction. It does not denote, and should not be interpreted as demonstrating, continuity of consciousness, preservation of personal identity, mind transfer, or literal survival.

The scientific objective is therefore deliberately narrower than “uploading a person”: to determine which biologically validated dynamics can be reconstructed computationally, how reconstruction fidelity should be tested, which functions require closed-loop embodiment, and where biological-to-digital correspondence fails. This formulation transforms embodied digital continuity from a metaphysical assertion into a falsifiable engineering and modeling program.

This description closely follows the manuscript's own abstract and, importantly, preserves its explicit boundary between computational fidelity and claims about consciousness or identity.