Embodied Singing: voice, interoception and Body-Territory in vocal expertise

(First-Person Consciousness • Decolonial Neuroscience • Brain Bee • O Sentir e Saber Taá)

O Sentir e Saber Taá — when the song begins inside

When I sing, the sound that reaches the world is the last part of the story.
Before any note leaves my mouth, something much mais discreto happens:

• my diaphragm prepares,
  
  

• my ribs open or close a little,
  
  

• my throat relaxes or tenses,
  
  

• the pulse in my neck changes,
  
  

• a thin vibration appears in the chest.
  
  

If I pay attention, I notice that my voice begins as interoception — as a feeling from inside, not as a sound outside.

Taá, here, is this moment in which I feel the song before I know the song.
The experiment we are commenting today does exactly isso: it asks whether being more aware of the internal body changes how we sing and how musical we become.

The publication that anchors this blog is:

Ana M. Zamorano, Nicolai T. Haumann, Davide Ligato, Pauline Maublanc, Elvira Brattico, Peter Vuust & Beate Kleber (2025). “Embodied Singing: The dual role of interoception in vocal expertise and musical competence.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

This paper is central for anyone who wants to connect:

• voice,
  
  

• interoception,
  
  

• musical expertise,
  
  

• and, in our language, Corpo Território.
  
  

A small decolonial opening: words that shrink the body

As I read this study, I also notice how many times neuroscience describes the singer as “just” a system of control loops: larynx, feedback, prediction error, optimization.

I realize that even my words have been colonized.
The language I learned to use shrinks:

• my body into a defective machine,
  
  

• my mind into a set of biases and deficits,
  
  

• my spirituality into superstition,
  
  

• my politics into consumption and productivity.
  
  

That is why so many neuroscientists avoid questions that would expose what colonial science doesn’t know how to name.

But when I feel my body before thinking — when Taá appears — I see there is no separation between Neuroscience, Politics and Spirituality (Utupe, Xapiri, living memory).

What colonizes is not only history;
it is the vocabulary that forbids us to exist as whole beings.

Each scientific discovery, when read with courage, opens a little crack in Zone 3 and gives the body back what it always was: living territory of possible worlds, vibrating in chest, breath and voice.

What did Zamorano and colleagues actually ask?

The core question of the study is simple and beautiful:

Does interoception play a double role in singing — both in becoming an expert vocalist and in broader musical competence?

They compare:

• trained singers,
  
  

• non-singers or less trained participants,
  
  

• measures of interoceptive accuracy (how well I perceive internal signals),
  
  

• and measures of musical performance and competence.
  
  

It’s not just “who has the best ear”.
It’s who feels the body from inside, and how that feeling shapes pitch control, timing, expression.

Methods and signal analysis — explained for Brain Bee

Although the article is primarily psicofisiológico and comportamental, it lives in the same methodological família as EEG and fNIRS:

• Interoception tasks
  
  

• For example, heartbeat detection or breathing focus tasks,
  
  

• asking participants to count beats or track internal sensations without external feedback.
  
  

• Vocal and musical tasks
  
  

• Pitch matching, melodic reproduction, sustained notes,
  
  

• evaluations of musicality and vocal control.
  
  

• Physiological signals
  
  

• Heart rate, respiration, sometimes combined with EEG in related works,
  
  

• allowing analysis of how internal rhythms synchronize with vocal performance.
  
  

When EEG is present in this research line, a typical pipeline includes:

• ICA (Independent Component Analysis) to remove eye blinks and muscle artifacts;
  
  

• FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) to explore oscillatory activity (for example, in auditory and motor cortices while singing);
  
  

• PCA (Principal Component Analysis) to find common patterns of brain activity across singers;
  
  

• sometimes CSD (Current Source Density) to refine topographic maps of neural generators.
  
  

Even without going into full EEG detail, the logic is the same:

measure internal signals + measure performance + test how they move together.

Main results: interoception is not just a detail

The key message:

• Interoception is strongly linked to vocal expertise;
  
  

• Singers often show more refined awareness of internal bodily cues;
  
  

• This awareness supports both:
  
  

• fine pitch control and breath management (technical expertise),
  
  

• and broader musical competence (expressivity, timing, nuance).
  
  

But there is a nuance:

• In some cases, too much interoceptive focus can become a trap —
  generating excess self-monitoring, tension, or performance anxiety.
  
  

Hence the “dual role” in the title:
interoception can be support or obstacle, depending on how it is integrated.

Reading the study through our concepts

1. Mente Damasiana and Corpo Território

In Antonio Damasio’s sense, consciousness is built from the dialogue between interoception and proprioception.

Here, singing is literally Mente Damasiana em performance:

• interoception: breath, visceral sensations, heart rhythm;
  
  

• proprioception: posture, larynx position, facial muscles;
  
  

• exteroception: sound returning through air and bone conduction.
  
  

“Embodied Singing” is exactly the science word for what we call Corpo Território:
the voice as a place where body, world and culture meet.

2. Quorum Sensing Humano (QSH)

When a choir sings, or when a singer is on stage with a band, QSH is everywhere:

• bodies tuning to the same tempo,
  
  

• shared breathing cycles,
  
  

• micro-adjustments of intonation to fit harmonic context.
  
  

This study invites us to see interoception as the basis of QSH:
I only tune with others because I can first tune with myself.

3. Eus Tensionais and Zones 1 / 2 / 3

• Zone 1: automatic technique — scales repeated, muscles “driving the show”.
  
  

• Zone 2: the moment of fruição, when singer and song become one; here interoception sustains expressive nuance.
  
  

• Zone 3: when ideology takes over the body — guilt, fear, performance perfectionism, religious or market demands.
  
  

Eus Tensionais appear clearly:

• the “technical I” that wants to control everything;
  
  

• the “expressive I” that wants to let go;
  
  

• the “judged I” that fears error before a colonized audience.
  
  

Interoception can either:

• help the passage to Zone 2 (when it grounds presence),
  
  

• or imprison the singer in Zone 3 (when it amplifies anxiety and self-criticism).
  
  

4. DANA and Yãy hã mĩy

DANA — the intelligence of DNA — appears in the way training sculpts the organism:

• metabolic adaptations,
  
  

• respiratory efficiency,
  
  

• neural plasticity in auditory–motor circuits.
  
  

Yãy hã mĩy, originally from the Maxakali people (imitar o animal antes de caçá-lo), expands here:

• the singer imitates and becomes the song,
  
  

• rehearsing movements, vowels, intentions,
  
  

• until voice and identity overlap in performance.
  
  

“Embodied Singing” is, in a way, a description of Yãy hã mĩy musical:
to sing well is to become the sound you want to offer.

Avatares Referências — who is looking at this study?

When I look at this article through our Avatares Referências, I immediately feel the presence of:

• Avatar Olmeca – the cultural-perceptual avatar,
  who reminds me that voice is never just physiology, but also history, language, colonial wounds, church choirs, indigenous chants.
  
  

Alongside Olmeca, DANA whispers that every hour of practice is DNA reorganizing itself to support a new way of existing in the world through voice.

Why this publication matters for a Decolonial Neuroscience

Zamorano and colleagues do something fundamental:

• they show that feeling the body is central to musical excellence;
  
  

• they treat interoception not as ruído, but as core intelligence;
  
  

• they open a bridge between technical voice training and lived experience.
  
  

For a Decolonial Neuroscience, this means:

• we can read singing not only as performance,
  but as ritual of belonging,
  as political presence of bodies that were historically silenced.
  
  

In Latin America, every canto popular, every indigenous chant, every voz quebrada pela dor carries this same truth:

there is no music without Corpo Território;
there is no neuroscience of music without Taá.

Keywords for scientific search

“Zamorano Haumann Ligato Maublanc Brattico Vuust Kleber 2025 Embodied Singing dual role interoception vocal expertise musical competence Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences”

When Two Brains Receive the Same World - Cooperation, synchrony, and the shared rhythm of attention

Embodied Singing -Voice, interoception, and Body-Territory in vocal expertise

Pleasant Odors and the Breath that Organizes Us - How smell organizes brain–body coupling

Architecture That Thinks With Me - Turning corners and the attentional cost of built environments

Auditory Approach Bias From Birth - How newborns and adults code the desire to listen

Beta Waves and the Moment I Truly Decide - The prefrontal cortex as the space where "feeling" becomes "choosing"

How My Brain Encodes Voice in Midlife - F0, listening effort, and the vitality of human hearing

Learning Beside Another Brain - Hyperscanning and the pedagogy of co-presence

Reproducibility in fNIRS - When can I trust the hemodynamic curve I see?

HRfunc and the True Shape of the Hemodynamic Response - Why every brain breathes light in its own way

Mixed Reality and Decision-Making - How the brain evaluates prototypes and hybrid worlds

Intense Exercise and the Awakening of Zone 2 - The hemodynamics of effort and the body that generates intelligence

Buttoning a Shirt - Everyday actions as windows into attention, gesture, and consciousness

Depression, tDCS, and the Prefrontal Cortex - Reigniting silent circuits

Designing fNIRS Studies in Real-World Environments - Why science must step outside the laboratory to exist

Transformers and Virtual Short-Channels - AI cleaning brain signals and retelling hemodynamics

Mental Fatigue and Performance - When the head gives up before the body

Cold Water and the Brain - Oxygenation, cold, and the consciousness of the limit

Walking After Stroke - Cognitive–motor interference in everyday life

Balance and the Cerebellum in Parkinson’s Disease - Movement, tensions, and reorganization of the Body-Territory

Freezing of Gait and the Loss of the Body’s Own Quorum - When the body stops trusting the next step

Children With Cochlear Implants - Learning to hear through the brain, not just the device

Emotional Processing in Children With Oppositional Behavior - Regulation, conflict, and the birth of Tensional Selves

Mild Cognitive Impairment - Early hemodynamic signs and presence in the world

Pain, Apathy, and Depression in Dementia - When feeling and thinking stop walking together

Cognitive Load - How much does fNIRS really feel my mental effort?

The Brain in Daily Life -Assisted horsemanship, sport, and embodied enjoyment

Linguistic Jiwasa - When language thinks the world

Dialogical Multiplication and Indigenous Psychology - How to let psychology listen without erasing the Other

The Feeling and Knowing Taá of Christmas 

Republican Capitalism of Spirits without Bodies

NIRS fNIRS EEG ERP Multimodal NIRS-EEG

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