Vol. 1 · Issue 1 · February 2026
Frontiers of Being
Where Physiology Meets Society
Open Access · Peer Reviewed
ISSN 0000-0000
EditorialFeatured Article

Why We Founded This Journal, and What We Hope to Resist
A note on rigour, integration, and the refusal of easy answers

The founding of Frontiers of Being responds to a specific absence: a space where physiology, social structure, phenomenology, and clinical experience can be examined together, without reduction. This editorial describes the intellectual commitments that will guide the journal, and the failures of existing discourse it intends to address.

G
G. Arese (MD, Founder)
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Also in this issue
Clinical & Field Notes
When the Vagus Fails: Autonomic Collapse in the Modern Clinic
R. Steiner, F. Okonkwo
Essay
Inflammation as Metaphor and Mechanism: On the Limits of the Biomedical Frame
C. Lefort
Essay
Phenotypic Plasticity and the Myth of the Fixed Self
M. Nkosi
Original Research
Heart Rate Variability as Social Signal: Preliminary Evidence from Paired Dyadic Interaction
T. Andersen, S. Park
New: Allostatic Load in Urban Populations — Field ReportOpen Call: Submissions for Vol. 1, Issue 2 — Deadline April 15Dialogue: On the Limits of NeuroimagingEssay: The Social Determinants of HRV — A FrameworkNew: Allostatic Load in Urban Populations — Field ReportOpen Call: Submissions for Vol. 1, Issue 2 — Deadline April 15Dialogue: On the Limits of NeuroimagingEssay: The Social Determinants of HRV — A Framework
Current Issue
Clinical & Field Notes

When the Vagus Fails: Autonomic Collapse in the Modern Clinic

A clinical review of vagal tone insufficiency as a common yet underdiagnosed substrate for multisystem dysfunction.

R. Steiner, F. Okonkwo — Basel / LagosRead →
Essay

Inflammation as Metaphor and Mechanism: On the Limits of the Biomedical Frame

Chronic low-grade inflammation has become the dominant explanatory model for modern disease. This essay asks whether that model captures something real.

C. Lefort — ParisRead →
Essay

Phenotypic Plasticity and the Myth of the Fixed Self

Developmental biology offers a challenge to stable notions of identity. The organism is not a program executed — it is a negotiation.

M. Nkosi — JohannesburgRead →
Original Research

Heart Rate Variability as Social Signal: Preliminary Evidence from Paired Dyadic Interaction

Preliminary findings suggesting that HRV synchrony between conversational partners may reflect affective attunement.

T. Andersen, S. Park — Copenhagen / SeoulRead →
Clinical & Field Notes

The Chronobiological Body in a 24-Hour Society: Notes from a Sleep Clinic

Circadian disruption has become normative. These field notes document patterns that textbooks have not yet named.

P. Guerrero — Mexico CityRead →
Essay

Touch Deprivation and the Skin as Regulatory Organ: An Interdisciplinary Synthesis

The skin is not a boundary. It is an interface — densely innervated, socially calibrated, and chronically understimulated in urban modernity.

L. Beaumont — MontrealRead →
Editorial
01
Vol. 1 · Issue 1
February 2026

Why We Founded This Journal,
and What We Hope to Resist

There is no shortage of science. What is scarce is synthesis — the kind that does not flatten complexity into a headline, nor hide behind jargon as a substitute for thought. This journal begins with a single conviction: that the most consequential questions in contemporary medicine and human science are not technical. They are conceptual.

We are not interested in building another platform for institutional output. We are interested in the space where physiology, social structure, phenomenology, and clinical experience meet — and in what becomes visible in that space, that would remain invisible in any single discipline alone.

— The Founding Editors, Frontiers of Being
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