Edoardo Chidichimo

Biography

Edoardo is an MPhil Biological Science by thesis candidate.

Working in the field of computational and mathematical social neuroscience, Edoardo is formalising information-theoretic approaches and measures into the social neurosciences. Focusing on hyperscanning methods (simultaneous dual-neuroimaging or -neurophysiological recordings during social interactions), Edoardo has developed an open source toolbox to analyse connectivity, causality, and informational dynamics for continuous time-series data on different scales of organisation (i.e., EEG, MEG, fMRI, fNIRS) — see HyperIT. Moreover, he is developing neurobiologically plausible biophysical simulations of interacting brains to understand and model their nonrandom and nonlinear coupling.

Edoardo holds a research position at Anglia Ruskin University where he is involved in applying virtual reality technology to understand and assist multi-sensory body representation in depersonalisation.

Another area of interest being pursued is the evolution of religious cognition (or "religiosity") and its various corollaries, such as extreme self-sacrifice and schizotypal cognition/phenomenology. On the latter point, collaborative research in experimental philosophy is being conducted to disambiguate the metaphysical, epistemic, and value commitments schizotypal persons make in their everyday meaning-making and phenomenology.

Finally, Edoardo remains deeply committed to an interdisciplinary approach to human social behaviour, continuing to combine and confront anthropological, philosophical, biological, and computational disciplinary boundaries. On this commitment, Edoardo founded the Cambridge Journal of Human Behaviour: an international, interdisciplinary journal for undergraduates. In the future, Edoardo hopes to combine computational approaches (e.g., machine learning and social network analyses) to anthropologically- and ethnographically-derived hypotheses in order to better predict and prevent violent extremism and terrorism, whilst formalising a computational social anthropology.

Research

Interdisciplinarity; computational social neuroscience; mathematical neuroscience; dynamical systems; information theory; hyperscanning; machine learning; biobehavioural synchrony; experimental and ethnographic methodologies; philosophy of science; religion and science; violent extremism and terrorism; schizophrenia; depersonalisation; VR.

Publications

Key publications:

Chidichimo, E. (2024, pre-print). HyperIT: A Python toolbox for an information-theoretic social neuroscience. Journal of Open Source Software. [Access the HyperIT toolbox GitHub]

Chidichimo, E. (forthcoming). Synchronized movement. In T. K. Shackelford (Ed.), Springer Nature Encyclopedia of Religious Psychology and Behavior.

Chidichimo, E. (forthcoming). Rituals and synchronized movement. In T. K. Shackelford (Ed.), Springer Nature Encyclopedia of Religious Psychology and Behavior.

Chidichimo, E. (2023). Healing the Family Within: Family Constellation Therapy in Northern Italy [Thesis]. Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

Chidichimo, E. (2022). Credo, cognition, and culture: An anthropology of religion. Cambridge Journal of Human Behaviour, 1(1), 47–58.

Other publications:

Chidichimo, E. (2023). Death anxiety, religiosity, and the functionalist strain: An ethnographic case study [Article commentary]. Cambridge Journal of Human Behaviour, 2(1), 17–18.

Mikalonytė, E. S., Chidichimo, E., & Kavedžija, I. (2023, in press). On AI-generated art: Intentionality, authorship, and ethics. Artery: A Podcast on Art, Authorship, and Anthropology.

Chidichimo, E. (2023). On the immunitarian paradigm: Protecting the geo-body from infectious Others [Article commentary]. Cambridge Journal of Human Behaviour, 1(4), 186–188.