Cognitive sciences are poorly represented in the fight against climate change and the environmental crisis. However, due to their fundamentally interdisciplinary nature, they could offer powerful methodological and conceptual tools for understanding and acting in the face of the environmental crisis. This is the gamble of this special issue of the journal Intellectica.
More specifically, this special issue aims to explore the contributions, strengths, and limitations of cognitive sciences in facing the major challenge of the ecological crisis, by showing how these disciplines can intervene in:
● Understanding the causes and cognitive mechanisms underlying ecologically problematic behaviors;
● Mitigating the impacts of the environmental crisis through the adaptation of behaviors, decision-making systems, learning devices, and even the modalities of cognitive research itself;
● Influencing the course of the crisis, through individual and collective mobilization, the transformation of representations, or innovation in modes of action.
Contributions related to understanding the causes of human behavior are welcome, helping to identify the drivers of inaction, the effects of cognitive automatisms, emotional regulation strategies in the face of threatening information, or dynamics of imitation, conformity, or social dissonance. So-called embodied, situated, or distributed cognitions also offer valuable perspectives for considering other relationships with the environment, less anthropocentric. This call therefore also invites authors to develop reflections on the relationship to living things and connection to nature from a cognitive science perspective.

Work on levers to promote adaptation in the face of the crisis is still not well known, particularly in the French-speaking world. This special issue is therefore open to contributions on the optimization of decision systems and the efficiency of artificial cognitive systems, the ergonomics of environments conducive to learning and behavioral change, and more generally the design of cognitive interfaces and tools (digital, robotic, or other) promoting sustainability, sobriety, or durability.

Within cognitive sciences, the human and social sciences provide intellectual tools for thinking about and documenting mobilizations, or the transformation of world representations and innovation in collective modes of action. The special issue is thus open to transdisciplinary proposals exploring in particular the construction of common narratives, the formation of committed collective identities, coordination between actors, as well as the cognitive, emotional, and perceptual mechanisms involved in militant action.

Conversely, cognitive sciences are often criticized for their focus on the individual, particularly in their way of conceiving behaviors and decisions. This methodological individualism can prove insufficient, even problematic, in the face of an environmental crisis that involves deeply social, cultural, and systemic dimensions. This special issue therefore particularly invites contributions that take into account or question the social, collective, political, and institutional dimension of responses to the crisis, but also to what extent cognitive sciences, in their intellectual and practical, even axiological dimensions, also participate in this systemic crisis. Work integrating critical and epistemological analyses of individualistic or reductionist models, as well as methodological or theoretical proposals for overcoming these limits, are encouraged.
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Contributions are invited on the following topics (non exhaustive list):
● Cognitive automatisms, emotions and environmental decisions
● Perception, representation and cognition of the environment
● Impact of climate change on human cognitive functions and mental health
● Contributions and limitations of cognitive neuroscience in the face of the ecological crisis
● The relationship to living things: Neurophenomenology, introspection and connection
● Cognitive psychology and behavioral sciences: promises and limitations for ecological transition
● Cognitive dimensions of ecological social movements and new narratives
● Cognitive approaches to environmental communication and education
● Technosolutionism, ideologies of progress and history of mentalities
● Sociology and critical epistemology of cognitive sciences
● Interface design and technologies for sustainability
● Political ecology and social studies of environmental cognition
Contributions can draw on experimental, theoretical, critical, or methodological approaches, and interdisciplinary collaborations are encouraged.
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Submission Guidelines

We welcome proposals in various formats (research articles, syntheses, critical essays, etc.), between 12 and 20 pages, written in French or English, as specified on the Intellectica journal website!
Instructions to authors
https://intellectica.org/en/authors
To send your manuscript : soumission@intellectica.org
● Proposal submission deadline (send title + abstract of approximately 500 words to the coordinators referenced below): November 30, 2025
● Full article submission deadline: March 2026
Planned publication of the issue: December 2026
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Issue Coordinators and Contacts

Maximilien Chaumon, Ph.D., Institut du Cerveau, Paris
maximilien.chaumon@icm-institute.org
Karim N'Diaye, Ph.D., Institut du Cerveau, Paris
karim.ndiaye@icm-institute.org

Do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or to discuss your potential contribution.