Skip to content
LuvemBooks
LuvemBooks

Who it's for. Who should skip it. What to read next.

T

Thrishantha Nanayakkara

About This Author
Reviewed

Read Time

8 min read

Age & reading levelAdult
$19.99 on Amazon
Curated & edited by

LuvemBooks Editorial

How we create our reviews →
Share This Review
Front cover of Ghost Circuits: How Intelligence Emerges from the Interaction of Body, Brain, and Environment

Our review

Ghost Circuits

Ghost Circuits: How Intelligence Emerges from the Interaction of Body, Brain, and Environment by Thrishantha Nanayakkara Review: A Rigorous, Research-Rooted Challenge to Brain-Centric Intelligence

by Thrishantha Nanayakkara

Drawing on more than 25 years of research and over 20 doctoral projects conducted at his Morph Lab at Imperial College London, robotics professor Thrishantha Nanayakkara argues in Ghost Circuits that intelligence is not a fixed property residing in the brain alone, but a temporary perception that arises when bodies, brains, and environments interact in dynamic, self-organising formations — a compelling and technically grounded contribution to the science of embodied cognition.

$19.99 on Amazon

LuvemBooks Verdict

Best for

Researchers, graduate students, and technically literate readers working at the intersection of robotics, cognitive science, neuroscience, or philosophy of mind who want a research-grounded alternative to brain-centric models of intelligence.

Worth it if

You're willing to engage with a deliberately unsettling, relational conception of intelligence — one built on more than 25 years of original research and over 20 PhD projects — rather than seeking a neat, operationalisable definition.

Skip if

Readers looking for a breezy popular-science introduction to AI or brain science, or those who need clean, conventional definitions they can immediately operationalise, will find the book's epistemological ambiguity and specialist depth a significant barrier.

The Imperial College Morph Lab page describes the book's central argument directly, noting that ghost circuits "come together on their own, continue their dynamic interactions on their own, dissolve on their own, and evolve on their own," and that the assessment of their intelligence "remains subjective, contingent upon the intricacies perceived by a conscious observer — a judgment that resists replication in identical form, as the observer becomes an integral part of the circuit" (imperial.ac.uk). On LinkedIn, Nanayakkara's own profile records a reader response reporting that encountering the book's ideas produced "a slightly full-circle moment," connecting fragmented life experiences into a unified meaning (linkedin.com).

Sources: Imperial College London – Morph Lab, LinkedIn – Thrishantha Nanayakkara

Ask LuvemBooks

Was this helpful?

Ghost Circuits: How Intelligence Emerges from the Interaction of Body, Brain, and Environment by Thrishantha Nanayakkara makes a radical case that intelligence is not brain-bound but a temporary, relational phenomenon — a "ghost circuit" that self-organises across body, brain, and environment before dissolving and re-forming. Grounded in over 25 years of research and more than 20 PhD projects from Nanayakkara's Morph Lab at Imperial College London, it is an authoritative and technically demanding contribution to embodied cognition. It is best suited to researchers, graduate students, and technically literate readers at the intersection of robotics, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind — those seeking a breezy popular-science introduction to AI will find the going steep.
Is it worth reading?
For the right reader, Ghost Circuits is a genuinely distinctive and research-rich contribution to the science of intelligence — one that earns its place, as LuvemBooks puts it, 'in any serious library of cognitive science and robotics.' The ghost circuit concept offers a coherent, falsifiable alternative to brain-centric models, and its bidirectional use of robotics to illuminate both engineering and biology gives the argument unusual empirical weight. The key caveat is accessibility: the book is structured around decades of specialist laboratory findings rather than popular-science narrative, and its deliberate resistance to clean, operationalisable definitions of intelligence will frustrate readers looking for tidy answers. Those willing to engage on the book's own terms, however, will find a coherent and carefully grounded framework.
Who should read this?
Ghost Circuits is best positioned for researchers, graduate students, and technically literate general readers working at the intersection of robotics, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. It will particularly reward readers already sceptical of brain-centric models of intelligence and those interested in how embodied and morphological computation reframe what 'thinking' means. Readers seeking a popular introduction to AI or a clean definition of intelligence should look elsewhere — the book is explicitly resistant to operationalisable definitions and demands engagement with its own terms.
Similar books
Readers drawn to Ghost Circuits will find natural companions on LuvemBooks' curated shelf. Ed Yong's An Immense World examines how radically different sensory systems construct different realities — a complementary perspective on distributed, embodied perception. James Gleick's Chaos explores self-organisation and emergent complexity in accessible narrative form, providing useful conceptual scaffolding for Nanayakkara's framework. For the body-mind intersection from a clinical angle, Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score shows how intelligence and trauma are written into physical systems, not just neural ones. Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili's Life on the Edge brings quantum biology to bear on how living systems exploit physics at its most fundamental — another challenge to reductive, brain-first models. Zoë Schlanger's The Light Eaters, on plant intelligence, extends the distributed-cognition question to organisms with no nervous system at all.
What are the main themes?
The central theme is the radical relocation of intelligence: rather than residing in the brain, intelligence in Ghost Circuits is a distributed, temporary phenomenon that emerges from the interaction of body, brain, and environment. Related themes include the subjectivity of intelligence assessment — the observer becomes part of the circuit being evaluated — and the porousness of the boundary between biological and artificial systems. The book also engages deeply with self-organisation and morphological computation, using phenomena such as cochlear mechanics and joint stabilisation to argue that mechanical and physical structures participate directly in cognition.
How difficult is this book to read?
Ghost Circuits is a demanding read. It is structured around decades of specialist laboratory research spanning soft robotics, morphological computation, and embodied cognition, and it does not adopt the narrative or explanatory scaffolding typical of popular science. The book's philosophical dimension — particularly its argument that intelligence assessment is inherently subjective and observer-dependent — adds a further layer of complexity. Readers without a background in at least one of robotics, cognitive science, or philosophy of mind should expect a significant but rewarding challenge.
How original is the ghost circuit framework?
The ghost circuit concept represents a genuinely distinctive contribution to the field. Rather than refining existing brain-centric models, Nanayakkara reconceives intelligence as a temporary, relational perception — one that cannot be localised to any single component of the body-brain-environment system. The concept was first introduced in the Handbook on Soft Robotics and is developed here into a full theoretical framework for the first time, giving Ghost Circuits the weight of a scientific programme reaching maturity rather than a speculative opening gambit. Its insistence that intelligence is observer-dependent and inherently subjective also sets it apart from most engineering-adjacent treatments of the subject.
Summarize this book

Summarize this book

Ghost Circuits argues that intelligence is not a fixed property residing in the brain alone, but a temporary perception that arises when bodies, brains, and environments coalesce into self-organising formations — which Nanayakkara calls ghost circuits — to solve dynamic problems, then dissolve and re-form. Drawing on over 25 years of research and more than 20 doctoral projects at his Morph Lab at Imperial College London, the book traces ghost circuits across biological phenomena such as the tapered cochlea membrane's separation of audio frequencies and the stabilising force fields in joints. Robotics serves as the book's primary experimental lens, used bidirectionally: robotic platforms illuminate how natural systems achieve distributed intelligence, while biological observations generate testable hypotheses for robotic design. The result is a technically grounded, philosophically ambitious reframing of what intelligence actually is and where it lives.

Follow up

What exactly is a ghost circuit?
What is the research foundation behind the book?
What fields does the book draw on?

Synthesized from verified book data & published reviews · How we review

Ask LuvemBooks

What would you like to know about Ghost Circuits?

Answers come from our editorial notes on this book. If we haven't covered something, we'll say so.

Readers often ask

Our Review

This review covers the book's content, premise and published critical reception, not a first-hand reading.

A bold reframing of intelligence itself — not as a brain-bound capacity but as a fleeting, relational phenomenon — Ghost Circuits earns its place in any serious library of cognitive science and robotics.

What the Book Actually Argues

At the heart of Ghost Circuits is a single, radical proposition: "Intelligence is a temporary perception rendered by a ghost circuit while it exists." The book defines ghost circuits as self-organising formations — drawing together body, brain, and environment — that coalesce to solve dynamic problems, then dissolve, evolve, and re-form on their own.
Nanayakkara writes that "ghost circuits emerge when formations, poised to solve dynamic problems with each other, meet and interact," and he traces this phenomenon across biological systems, from the separation of audio frequencies in the tapered cochlea membrane to the stabilising force fields in joints. The central claim is that the brain's constant effort to tune posture and joint stiffness during a task is not incidental housekeeping but a direct expression of mechanical intelligence at work in physical systems — intelligence that is distributed, not localised.

The Research Foundation Behind the Framework

What gives the book unusual authority is the depth of its empirical foundation. Nanayakkara is Professor of Robotics at the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London and Director of the Morph Lab, and the book draws explicitly on more than 25 years of his research career, including work from more than 20 PhD projects.
The ghost circuit concept was introduced in the Handbook on Soft Robotics before being developed here into a full theoretical framework, meaning the book represents the maturation of an ongoing scientific programme rather than a speculative first attempt. Fields including soft robotics, morphological computation, and embodied cognition all feed into the argument, giving the book an unusually broad empirical base for a volume of its scope.

Robotics as Experimental Lens

One of the book's distinguishing methodological choices is its use of robotics as the primary experimental paradigm for investigating ghost circuits. This serves a dual purpose that Nanayakkara makes explicit: robotic experimentation yields useful engineering solutions while simultaneously deepening understanding of the natural world.
Rather than treating biological and artificial systems as separate domains, the book uses each to illuminate the other — findings from robotic platforms shed light on how human joints and muscles participate in intelligent behaviour, while biological observations generate testable hypotheses for robotic design. This bidirectional approach gives the argument a concrete, falsifiable quality that purely theoretical treatments of intelligence often lack.

The Philosophical Stakes and Their Complexity

The book's philosophical claims are ambitious and, by design, unsettling. Nanayakkara argues that the assessment of a ghost circuit's intelligence is inherently subjective, contingent on the perceptions of a conscious observer — and that this judgment cannot be replicated identically because the observer becomes part of the circuit itself.
This epistemological dimension sets the book apart from standard engineering texts, but it also introduces genuine complexity. Readers approaching from a purely technical background may find the dissolution of clear boundaries between observer and system demanding, and those seeking a conventional definition of intelligence that can be cleanly operationalised will find the book deliberately resistant to that.
The argument's strength — its insistence on relational, context-dependent intelligence — is inseparable from its challenge to reader expectations.

Who This Book Is For

Ghost Circuits is best positioned for researchers, graduate students, and technically literate general readers working at the intersection of robotics, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. One reader response noted that encountering the book's ideas produced "a slightly full-circle moment," connecting fragmented life experiences into a unified meaning — suggesting the framework resonates beyond specialist audiences for those already curious about how intelligence and embodiment relate.
The book is structured around decades of laboratory findings rather than popular-science narrative, so readers looking for a breezy introduction to AI or brain science will find it demanding. For those willing to engage with the argument on its own terms, however, it offers a coherent and research-grounded alternative to brain-centric models of intelligence that dominate both the scientific literature and the public conversation.

Sources & Further Reading

The key facts and claims in this review are grounded in the retrieved, verified sources listed below.

  1. 1
    Morph Lab | Research groups | Imperial College London

    imperial.ac.uk

  2. 2
    Thrishantha Nanayakkara - Imperial College London | LinkedIn

    linkedin.com

Age & Reading Level

Recommended age

Adult

Browse all adult books

Skip if you want a breezy popular-science introduction to AI or a clean, operationalisable definition of intelligence.

From our readers

Reader reviews

Be one of the first readers to answer.

Read it? Was it right for you?

Books like Ghost Circuits

Curated picks for readers who enjoyed Ghost Circuits, with our reasoning for each match.

If you liked Ghost Circuits

In our catalogue

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

Ed Yong

Both books argue that intelligence and perception are shaped by the body-environment interface — Yong shows this through animal sensory worlds, expanding how you think about mind.

If you loved Ghost Circuits and found yourself asking how much of intelligence is really 'in the head,' An Immense World is the perfect next read. Ed Yong explores how different animals experience reality through radically different sensory systems — a direct, vivid illustration of the embodied-cognition argument Nanayakkara makes in engineering terms. Where Ghost Circuits grounds its ideas in robotics experiments and doctoral research, Yong brings the same insight to biology, showing that perception is always a product of body structure meeting environment. Readers who search for 'books like Ghost Circuits about mind and body interaction' will find this an ideal companion — scientifically rigorous, wide-ranging, and written for curious non-specialists who want their assumptions about intelligence genuinely challenged.

In our catalogue

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Bessel van der Kolk

Van der Kolk's central claim — that the body shapes mind and memory as much as the brain does — directly echoes Nanayakkara's embodied-intelligence thesis from a clinical angle.

In our catalogue

Chaos: Making a New Science

James Gleick

Gleick's account of self-organising, emergent complexity maps directly onto Nanayakkara's framework — both books show order arising from dynamic, unpredictable interactions rather than top-down design.

In our catalogue

Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology

Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili

Like Ghost Circuits, this book argues that life exploits surprising physical phenomena — quantum effects — that sit at the boundary between organism and environment, challenging reductive views of biology.

In our catalogue

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate

Peter Wohlleben

Wohlleben's forest-network argument — that intelligence-like behaviour emerges from distributed, environment-embedded systems — mirrors Nanayakkara's thesis in a completely different and accessible setting.

In our catalogue

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Changes Everything

Zoë Schlanger

Schlanger investigates cognition and adaptive behaviour in systems with no brain at all — a vivid real-world stress-test of the embodied-intelligence argument at the heart of Ghost Circuits.

Not your thing?

In our catalogue

The Body: A Guide for Occupants

Bill Bryson

If Ghost Circuits felt too technical and research-dense, Bryson covers how the human body works with the same curiosity but lighter touch — warm, witty, and impossible to put down.