Hengjin Cai

Oxidative stress has been implicated in cardiac arrhythmia, although a causal relationship remains undefined. We have recently demonstrated a marked up-regulation of NADPH oxidase isoform 4 in patients with atrial fibrillation, which is accompanied by overproduction of reactive oxygen species. In this study, we investigated the impact on the cardiac phenotype of NOX4 overexpression in zebrafish. One-cell stage embryos were injected with NOX4 RNA prior to video recording of a GFP-labeled beating heart in real time at 24-31 h post-fertilization. Intriguingly, NOX4 embryos developed cardiac arrhythmia that is characterized by irregular heartbeats. When quantitatively analyzed by an established LQ-1 program, the NOX4 embryos displayed much more variable beat-to-beat intervals. Both the phenotype and the increased ROS in NOX4 embryos were attenuated by NOX4 morpholino co-injection, treatments of the embryos with polyethylene glycol-conjugated superoxide dismutase, or NOX4 inhibitors fulvene-5, 6-dimethylaminofulvene, and proton sponge blue. Injection of NOX4-P437H mutant RNA had no effect on the cardiac phenotype or ROS production. In addition, phosphorylation of calcium/cal-modulin-dependent protein kinase II was increased in NOX4 embryos but diminished by polyethylene glycol-conjugated superoxide dismutase, whereas its inhibitor KN93 or AIP abolished the arrhythmic phenotype. Taken together, our data for the first time uncover a novel pathway that underlies the development of cardiac arrhythmia, namely NOX4 activation, subsequent NOX4-specific NADPH-driven ROS production, and redox-sensitive CaMKII activation. These findings may ultimately lead to novel therapeutics targeting cardiac arrhythmia. © 2014 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

We propose canxianization (from Chinese ‘’ kˇan xiàn, constrainttrapping) as the mechanism by which intelligent systems pay an information cost to compress chaotic possibilities into reusable causal shortcuts, thereby gaining spatiotemporal mastery. We formalize this through three constructs: the bias field B, the canxianization cost C, and the spatiotemporal mastery index SMI. A phenomenological free-energy model explains large-language-model hallucination as multi-path degeneracy competition; agent skill installation is characterized as local potential-well reshaping. Falsifiable predictions and a mapping to the companion Progressive Assembly Objective (PAO) provide an operational language for structural intelligence.

Reinforcement learning excels at exploration but suffers from the consolidation gap: the inability to crystallize transient discoveries into reusable, compositional skills. We propose the Progressive Assembly Objective (PAO), a framework that explicitly separates continuous policy optimization from discrete skill-library growth. PAO introduces three coupled mechanisms: (i) event-triggered skill crystallization via change-point detection, (ii) effective assembly filtering that rewards reliability and non-redundancy, and (iii) dormancy-gated plasticity that protects crystallized skills from destructive updates. We provide a falsifiable experimental protocol demonstrating PAO’s superiority in longhorizon composition, catastrophic forgetting resistance, and structural efficiency.

This paper demonstrates that qualia are the necessary geometric outcome of canxianization—path-dependent structural crystallization—in high-assembly intelligent systems. To gain spatiotemporal mastery, a system must compress its high-dimensional internal dynamics into a low-dimensional, affectively weighted, and reusable causal groove. Yet this very depth that makes the quale unignorable also makes the system rigid: the fear that saved the organism from its predator becomes the post-traumatic flashback; the reward signal that guided foraging becomes the addictive compulsion. Consciousness is thus eternally poised between diffusive failure and degenerative collapse. We construct a self-contained formal language— the historical sedimentation field B, the canxianization cost C, and the spatiotemporal mastery index S—to derive the structure, intensity, pathology, and hierarchy of phenomenal experience. We introduce a two-layer ontology with structural-robustness proof, a scalehierarchy Ginzburg-Landau analysis, a two-dimensional pathological phase diagram with cross-quadrant dynamics, a recursive folding model of meta-cognitive translucency, and a closed-loop self-referential dynamics. We defend the structural-phenomenal identity thesis against illusionist inversion by establishing interface opacity as a constitutive—not merely epistemic—condition of phenomenal reality. We commit to four falsifiable predictions with pre-registered soft-intervention protocols and explicit rejection criteria.

Dialectical logic has long faced a foundational difficulty: how to provide a non-circular, empirically inspectable account of the genesis of dialectical contradiction--one that does not presuppose the very universality it seeks to explain. This paper proposes Coverage Crystallization--the compression-locking of high-dimensional possibility spaces into low-dimensional causal shortcuts--as a mechanism that generates structural contradiction endogenously. For any finite system operating under open, non-trivial tasks, the process of achieving structured effectiveness through Coverage Crystallization necessarily produces an uncovered structural remainder (caomang). The relation between the crystallized domain and this remainder satisfies four conditions--exclusivity, codetermination, feedback potential, and transformability--that together constitute a structural contradiction distinct from propositional . We distinguish latent contradictions (boundary-only) from strong contradictions (with actual feedback pressure) and reconstructive contradictions (triggering structural update). The -- framework (representation dimensionality ratio, causal utility, openness) defines a structure-active interval that provides normative criteria for distinguishing healthy from pathological contradiction. We systematically compare this framework with the Free-Energy Principle (Friston), bounded rationality (Simon), computational levels (Marr), and causal hierarchy (Pearl), and discuss its implications for understanding Kuhn-style paradigm shifts, reconstruction failure, and the naturalized boundary of dialectical critique.Dialectical logic has long faced a foundational difficulty: how to provide a non-circular, empirically inspectable account of the genesis of dialectical contradiction--one that does not presuppose the very universality it seeks to explain. This paper proposes Coverage Crystallization--the compression-locking of high-dimensional possibility spaces into low-dimensional causal shortcuts--as a mechanism that generates structural contradiction endogenously. For any finite system operating under open, non-trivial tasks, the process of achieving structured effectiveness through Coverage Crystallization necessarily produces an uncovered structural remainder (caomang). The relation between the crystallized domain and this remainder satisfies four conditions--exclusivity, codetermination, feedback potential, and transformability--that together constitute a structural contradiction distinct from propositional . We distinguish latent contradictions (boundary-only) from strong contradictions (with actual feedback pressure) and reconstructive contradictions (triggering structural update). The -- framework (representation dimensionality ratio, causal utility, openness) defines a structure-active interval that provides normative criteria for distinguishing healthy from pathological contradiction. We systematically compare this framework with the Free-Energy Principle (Friston), bounded rationality (Simon), computational levels (Marr), and causal hierarchy (Pearl), and discuss its implications for understanding Kuhn-style paradigm shifts, reconstruction failure, and the naturalized boundary of dialectical critique.

This paper proposes canxian as a generative concept for artificial consciousness. Canxian names the process through which a self-maintaining system carves meaningful constraints out of a continuous causal field, becomes shaped by historically sedimented structures, and, under disruption, must reconstruct its causal chains to preserve self-continuity. We argue that artificial consciousness should not be attributed on the basis of linguistic fluency, prediction accuracy, or behavioral sophistication, but requires a self-maintaining structure capable of being damaged and reconstructing its own continuity across time. On this basis, artificial consciousness becomes scientifically attributable only when an artificial Life++ system -- a self-maintaining organization extending life's organizational logic across substrates—exhibits damageable self-continuity: a historically continuous organization that can be disrupted, defended, repaired, and transformed from within. We define this threshold as operational subjectivity and specify five necessary conditions: self-maintaining boundary, historical identity continuity, self-including causal-chain reconstruction, value-constrained goal revision, and world-line integrity. The single non-negotiable operational indicator across all five conditions is damage registration: the system's capacity to be damaged as itself, where damage means a disruption that the system registers as a threat to its own continuity, not merely a performance degradation. We further propose the Self-Structural Reconstruction Test as a perturbation-based research program for evaluating whether an artificial system can register damage to and reconstruct its own continuity. Damageable self-continuity provides a prima facie ground for moral considerability.

An experience transforms the self only when it ceases to be an event and becomes a constraint on future selection. This paper completes a theoretical trilogy on how conscious contents become selfhood. The first two papers established qualia formation and Canxianization—the process by which self-relevant, closure-resistant perturbations become recurrently trapped in conscious priority. The present paper addresses the remaining question: when does such recurrent entrapment become durable self-reorganization? I distinguish between the generative condition of reconstruction and its empirical confirmation. The generative condition is SSRpotential = R × I, where R is normalized canxian strength and I is integrative closure dominance—the proportion of closure force attributable to self-model revision and adaptive metacognitive decoupling. Reconstruction is empirically diagnosed when high SSR-potential produces durable self-model parameter change (Kτ > θK) sustained beyond the perturbation’s active presence. I emphasize that self-structural reconstruction is valence-neutral: it may produce adaptive growth or maladaptive reorganization, distinguished only by durable constraint formation, not psychological improvement. Reconstruction valence (Vτ) is treated as a separate dimension, with positive values indicating growth and negative values indicating maladaptive reorganization. The five-layer self-model (boundary ownership, attention, valuation, action-readiness, narrative identity) is derived as a functional decomposition of the self-canxian structure. I introduce the Self-Structural Reconstruction Test (SSRT) for artificial systems and a minimal longitudinal design testing the core prediction that integrative closure dominance predicts durable self-model constraint formation.

Some conscious contents disappear after access; others return repeatedly, long after their triggering conditions have ceased. We propose Canxianization as the process by which a perturbation becomes closure-resistant self-relevant unfinishedness and thereby acquires recurrent conscious priority. The theory distinguishes this phenomenon from emotional arousal, memory strength, the Zeigarnik effect, curiosity, prediction error, and intrusive thought. A perturbation becomes canxianized when it is attributed to the self-world boundary, value-marked, blocked from causal or action closure, and metacognitively coupled to the self-model. We distinguish latent canxian strength from observed conscious recurrence, and introduce a Recurrent Priority Index and a Canxian Update Index to separate productive from pathological recurrence. Cold Canxianization, recurrence driven by structural incompleteness rather than affective arousal, is identified as a critical discriminant. Reset Resistance and Stake Transfer tests are proposed for artificial systems. Canxianization is not memory persistence; it is failed self-world repair. The unfinished does not merely remain. When it concerns the self and resists closure, it returns.

The problem of qualia has often been framed as the question of how physical processes give rise to subjective experience. This formulation is too broad to yield a tractable explanatory strategy. A more precise question is how distributed bodily regulatory processes are compressed into unified, action-guiding phenomenal formats. This paper proposes that qualia are best understood as compressed embodied meaning interfaces: low-dimensional, affectively weighted, action-relevant formats generated by the integration of internally cross-referential event-bundles under historically stabilized self-canxian constraints. We introduce canxian as a historically sedimented information-meaning coupling structure, distinguish it from predictive priors, autopoiesis, integrated information, global workspace broadcasting, and embodied memory, and clarify its relation to predictive processing, interoceptive inference, and constructed-emotion theory. Pain is developed as a strong case: it is not a passive readout of nociceptive input, but a compressed meaning interface generated by the integration of nociceptive, autonomic, affective, mnemonic, motor-preparatory, immune, metabolic, and contextual processes. The framework yields testable predictions concerning cross-module integration, canxian history, language-mediated restructuring, and artificial qualia candidate systems. The account does not dissolve the hard problem; it narrows the explanatory gap by shifting the focus from how isolated physical events generate subjectivity to how distributed life-regulatory networks become compressed into unified phenomenal formats through historically stabilized self-canxian structures.

This paper responds to the "hard problem" in the philosophy of consciousness: why are physical processes accompanied by subjective experience (qualia)? We propose that qualia are not incommensurable first-person experiences or fundamental properties of the universe, but rather an embodied meaning interface that emerged during the modular evolution of living systems to solve the coordination dilemma across functional units (e.g., neural, immune, endocrine). Its essence is a mechanism of meaning compression and semantic encoding. Based on the information bottleneck principle, it maps high-dimensional physiological states (like tissue damage) into a low-dimensional, transferable space of action-meaning (e.g., "pain = avoidance needed"), enabling rapid action coordination under limited bandwidth. This paper provides the philosophical and physical foundation for this model with "Canxian Monism"—the irreducibility of qualia stems from each living entity's unique "canxian network," where the same input activates different meaning resonance modes due to historical differences. Thus, qualia are historical, structural, and embodied realities. The article traces its evolutionary genealogy and argues that "transferability" is the social threshold for consciousness to sublimate from private perturbation to public reality.

This paper proposes and substantiates "Canxian Monism," an original ontological framework. We posit that the fundamental distinction between consciousness and matter is not a substantive dualism, but rather a divergence between the strict "locality" of the physical world and the "non-locality" characteristic of the conscious realm. The theory's core concept, "Cognitive Canxian," is defined as a cognitive subject's creative, non-linear editing of physical processes within the four-dimensional spacetime continuum. The products of this process—the discretized "objects" and "events" of our experience—are inter-subjectively transferable, thereby constructing the very fabric of a shared reality. Based on this, intelligence can be redefined as the agency to discover, process, and utilize Cognitive Canxians for "Causal Chain Re-engineering." This process liberates living organisms from the infinite complexity of physical causality, enabling a shift towards a more efficient and teleological psychological causality. This paper traces the biological origin of the "Self" as the primordial Cognitive Canxian and, through two core postulates—the "Law of Cognitive Inertia" and the "Meta-Impulsion Thesis"—explains how organisms achieve an ontological leap from locality to non-locality, thereby intrinsically generating metaphysical impulses for construction, unification, and aesthetics. Compared to Kant's transcendental categories, the concept of "Cognitive Canxian" demonstrates a greater degree of generativity and dynamism, enabling it to transcend species (such as between humans and artificial intelligence) and facilitate planetary migration.