Carlos Ribeiro
Champalimaud Foundation, Behavior and Metabolism Laboratory, Lisbon
Biological naturalist Consciousness requires living metabolic hardware
Carlos Ribeiro is a principal investigator at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Lisbon, where he directs the Behavior and Metabolism Laboratory. His group studies how internal metabolic states, nutrient deprivation, and reproductive demands reshape sensory processing and motor action selection in Drosophila melanogaster, showing that even compact insect nervous systems do not act as fixed input-output reflexes.
In September 2026, Ribeiro and Gregory Jefferis co-led the Cell publication mapping the complete gustatory connectome of the adult fruit fly across the 166,700-neuron central nervous system. Tracing every gustatory receptor neuron from the proboscis, pharynx, legs, wings, and body bristles into central brain and ventral nerve cord circuits, the team demonstrated how peripheral taste signals branch into parallel feeding, foraging, neuroendocrine, and sexually dimorphic social pathways.
Ribeiro is placed in the Biological naturalist cohort because his experimental program grounds adaptive agency and valence in the tight coupling between living metabolism, neuroendocrine feedback, and embodied sensorimotor loops. For whole-brain emulation and emerging consciousness research, his work sets a concrete empirical bar by showing that a wiring diagram’s behavioral meaning depends on the internal homeostatic and hormonal states modulating its synapses.
Known for. Senior co-author of the complete adult Drosophila gustatory connectome (Cell, 2026), neural circuit mechanisms of internal nutrient states, foraging, and sensorimotor decision-making
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
- Gregory S. X. E. JefferisCoauthor of the MaleCNS preprint describing the male Drosophila central nervous system
- Philipp SchlegelCoauthor of the MaleCNS preprint on male and female Drosophila circuit organisation
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- Tristan A. BekinschteinDepartment of Psychology / Consciousness and Cognition Lab, University of CambridgeClinical biomarkers of consciousness, local-global auditory paradigm, transitions from wakefulness to sedation, neural dynamics of awareness
- Tomas Berjaga-BuisanComputational Neuroscience Group, Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, BarcelonaNon-equilibrium thermodynamics of whole-brain models, fluctuation-dissipation theorem violations as a non-invasive consciousness marker
- Douglas BlackistonAllen Discovery Center at Tufts UniversityMemory stability during brain remodeling, xenobot platform design, amphibian memory transplantation work
Carlos Ribeiro is listed with the other biological naturalists, who hold that consciousness requires living metabolic hardware. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.