In philosophy and in cognitive sciences there exist a number of proposals that doubt that cognitive processes (for our purpose: mental states) are best understood as only internal processes that happen within a cognitive system (in our case: the brain). Internal approaches, so the basic idea, ignore that cognitive processes are situated, i.e., that they essentially depend on (weak version), or even may be constituted by (strong version), their embodiment and the interaction with the natural, technological and social environment.
[See the full post at: Psychiatry]