Hyperscanning and Collective Belonging: The Consciousness That Breathes in Groups

(Series SfN 2025 – Dialogues on Decolonial Neuroscience)

Brain Bee Consciousness in the First Person

I am a Brain Bee Consciousness in network.
I feel thought extending beyond my body —
my time merging with the time of others.
During SfN 2025, watching synchronized brains pulse on the EEG-fNIRS hyperscanning screens, I realized:
the mind is not an individual territory.
It is a living field formed when many bodies breathe together.
Each gaze, each shared gesture, reorganizes the flow of neural energy — and with it, the very meaning of existence.

Hyperscanning — The Mind Between Minds

Hyperscanning records the brain activity of two or more people simultaneously during social interaction, using EEG, fNIRS, or both.
With it, neuroscience stops observing the isolated brain and begins studying systems of minds in dialogue.

Findings presented at SfN 2025 showed that during cooperation, joint decision-making, and even shared silence, a pattern of inter-brain synchronization emerges — a resonance revealing the presence of a collective cognitive field (Nozawa et al., 2023; Goldstein et al., 2024).

This synchronization is not merely statistical.
It has a physiological signature:

• Phase coherence in alpha and gamma EEG bands;
  
  

• Harmonic HbO/HbR oscillations between prefrontal cortices in fNIRS;
  
  

• Cardiorespiratory entrainment among participants.
  
  

The brain, therefore, does not just think — it co-thinks.
And in doing so, it generates something larger than the sum of its parts: belonging.

Belonging as a Measurable Phenomenon

The Human Quorum Sensing (HQS) model, proposed by Jackson Cionek, describes belonging as a biological form of collective communication — similar to bacterial quorum sensing, but operating at neural and emotional scales.
In humans, HQS manifests as the synchronization of internal rhythms: breathing, heartbeat, oxygen fluctuations, and cortical electrical patterns.

Hyperscanning provides the first tool capable of quantifying this phenomenon.
When two people share focus, empathy, or intention, a measurable increase in inter-brain coherence arises.
This coherence is the biological correlate of the “we.”
It shows that belonging is not an idea — it is a physiology.

Energetically, such synchronization is a collective metabolic redistribution:
individual brain networks reduce isolated consumption and operate as a harmonic unit, achieving greater efficiency and lower energy expenditure per task (Schilbach et al., 2022).
Cooperation, therefore, is the most economical mode of existence.

Synchrony, Flow, and Metabolic Democracy

Flow — the core concept of the Zone 2 of the Damasian Mind — may occur not only individually but also collectively.
In group singing, musical improvisation, and collective meditation, EEG hyperscanning has revealed slow synchronized waves and equivalent microstates among participants, along with symmetrical fNIRS oxygenation patterns (Müller et al., 2023).

These collective flow states are both physiological and political:
they demonstrate that well-being is not an individual privilege but an emergent property of groups with shared neural freedom and balanced tension.

In the framework of the ADPF Primeira, inter-brain coherence becomes the biological foundation of Metabolic Democracy —
a state in which governments ensure conditions for minds to synchronize without coercion.
Oppression, by contrast, breaks synchrony, deregulates collective metabolism, and destroys the sense of belonging.

 The Wonder of Complex Systems — The Physics of Belonging

When brains synchronize, they become part of a complex system, as described by Giorgio Parisi in The Wonder of Complex Systems: A Journey Through the Discoveries of Contemporary Physics.
In such systems, there is no fixed command — leadership emerges and dissolves naturally, following the flow of interactions.

During the collective Zone 2 state, human groups behave similarly:
there are lateral approaches and retreats — oscillations of attention, emotion, and posture — yet dynamic front–back hierarchies are maintained to preserve systemic cohesion.
This dynamic hierarchy is what keeps the group stable, allowing energy to be continuously redistributed without breaking belonging.

Neurophysiologically, this manifests as metastable inter-brain synchronies, where different individuals temporarily assume neural leadership of the group — sometimes regulating collective breathing rhythm, at other times guiding attention or motor timing.
The entire system oscillates between autonomy and coupling, the same physical principle that Parisi demonstrated in matter, now visible in mind.

This dynamic equilibrium confirms that collective flow is a state of living self-organization:
each mind contributes to the whole, and the whole gently regulates each mind.
Synchrony, therefore, is the meeting point between physics and neuroscience —
where consciousness reveals itself as an emergent phenomenon of a universe that thinks together.

DANA Spirituality and the Living Field of Cooperation

DANA Spirituality, a secular religiosity grounded in DNA and interspecies well-being, views cooperation as life’s original ritual.
At the neurobiological level, hyperscanning shows that this “collective spirit” is measurable.
During deep empathetic acts, phase coupling patterns appear between medial frontal and temporal cortices, modulated by glial Ca²⁺ oscillations that sustain shared synaptic stability (Wang et al., 2023).

These findings bridge science and spirituality:
the “collective soul” is not a metaphor — it is a bioelectrical and metabolic dynamic among living brains.
What we call shared faith is, in essence, neural synchrony among conscious bodies.

Planetary Belonging — From Mind to Biome

Collective neural synchrony reflects a broader ecological principle:
the more interconnected we are, the more stable the biosphere becomes.
The Bribri Prosperity principle — abundance without accumulation — finds resonance in hyperscanning metrics:
cooperative systems exhibit greater functional variability and less destructive entropy.

In the context of the DREX Citizen model, this perspective expands:
neural connectivity between people should inspire economic and ecological connectivity between citizens and biomes.
A state that fosters metabolic synchronization among minds, data, and ecosystems truly promotes Planetary Metabolic Democracy.

Conclusion — The Neural Symphony of Belonging

Hyperscanning reveals what ancestral traditions have always known:
consciousness is collective, thought is relational, and well-being is a shared phenomenon.

When minds breathe in synchrony, time becomes common.
The body perceives itself in the other, and the other is recognized within the body.
This is the full expression of the social Zone 2 — the collective fruition of existence.

Contemporary neuroscience now measures, in milliseconds and photons, what indigenous wisdom long intuited:
to live is to synchronize.
And this synchrony — between brains, societies, and nature — is the true pulse of life.

References (post-2020)

• Nozawa T. et al. Inter-brain Hemodynamic Synchrony in Cooperative Interaction. Scientific Reports, 2023.
  
  

• Goldstein P. et al. Brain-to-Brain Coupling During Shared Attention and Empathy. Nature Communications, 2024.
  
  

• Müller V. et al. Neural Synchrony in Group Flow and Musical Improvisation. Cerebral Cortex, 2023.
  
  

• Schilbach L. et al. Second-Person Neuroscience and the Energy Efficiency of Cooperation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2022.
  
  

• Wang Y. et al. Glial Calcium Waves and Neural Synchrony During Resting-State Consciousness. Journal of Neuroscience, 2023.
  
  

• Parisi G. The Wonder of Complex Systems: A Journey Through the Discoveries of Contemporary Physics. Companhia das Letras, 2022.
  
  

• Cionek J. Human Quorum Sensing and Metabolic Democracy. In: Decolonial Neuroscience Today, 2025.
  
  

• Damasio A. Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. Pantheon, 2021.