NIRS EEG Multimodal Hyperscanning Sfn2026

We Measure to Know, Not to Become What We Measure

Beyond Brain Synchrony | Decolonial Neuroscience · Collective Agency · APUS · Tekoha · Jiwasa

EEG · fNIRS · NIRS · ECG · HRV · Respiration · Brain–Body–Environment Coupling



NIRS EEG Multimodal Hyperscanning Sfn2026

1. What if our scientific measurements are reproducing the limits of our worldview?

Imagine five researchers observing the same group of people.

One measures neural synchronization. Another records breathing. A third analyzes heart-rate variability. The fourth studies behavior. The fifth listens to what participants experienced.

They are investigating the same event, but their instruments produce different descriptions.

Which one represents reality?

Recortamos para Saber, não para Ser.

Every experiment begins by selecting variables, participants, instruments, environments, and analytical models. These methodological choices determine which aspects of reality become observable.

El recorte permite conocer, pero no determina la totalidad de aquello que existe.

A scientifically reproducible result may describe a genuine phenomenon within defined experimental conditions. However, reproducibility alone does not guarantee that our interpretation explains the broader phenomenon.

We may repeatedly reproduce not only physiological patterns but also the limitations of our experimental design.

What if the relationship we want to understand has been excluded by the very methods used to investigate it?

This question introduces BrainLatam's Multimodal Hyperscanning Hub: an interdisciplinary investigation of neural activity, physiological regulation, behavior, subjective experience, and collective agency.

2. The Outside Influences the Inside - The Inside Perceives the Outside

The nervous system does not function independently of the organism's metabolic and environmental conditions.

External stimuli influence perception, autonomic regulation, learning, and neural activity. Internal physiological states influence attention, expectations, behavior, and environmental exploration.

O fora influencia o dentro, e o dentro percebe, interpreta e transforma o fora.

Antonio and Hanna Damasio (2024) propose that homeostatic feelings, sensory images, and the integration of bodily experience contribute fundamentally to consciousness.

Their framework helps explain why studying behavior is also relevant to understanding brain function.

BrainLatam explores these relationships in Mente Damasiana e a Origem Neural da Responsabilidade Cívica.

The article extends neurobiological ideas toward civic experience through an authorial interpretation, rather than a conclusion directly established by Damasio.

For hyperscanning, the scientific question becomes:

How does interaction modify the internal physiological state of each participant, and how do those states subsequently modify the interaction?

3. APUS and Tekoha - The Body-Territory Is Not the Measurement

In APUS e Tekoha - Como o mundo entra no corpo e o corpo retorna ao mundo, BrainLatam introduces two complementary conceptual perspectives.

APUS opens questions about spatial orientation, movement, position, and possibilities for action.

Tekoha opens questions about bodily regulation, interoception, lived territory, and belonging.

These are provisional interpretations developed by BrainLatam. They are not literal neuroscientific translations of Indigenous concepts, whose Andean and Guarani meanings deserve independent recognition.

El Corpo-Território no cabe completamente dentro de una señal cerebral.

EEG measures electrical potentials. fNIRS estimates hemodynamic variations. ECG records cardiac electrical activity.

Together, these measurements enrich our investigation, but their combination does not become the complete living organism.

The map becomes more informative without becoming the territory.

4. Triple-Aspect Monism - Matter, Information and Feeling

Brazilian researcher Alfredo Pereira Jr. proposes Triple-Aspect Monism, a philosophical framework connecting material processes, informational organization, and sentience.

BrainLatam discusses this proposal in Monismo de Triplo Aspecto Ampliado - Corpo, Experiência e Linguagem.

The framework encourages an important distinction between physiological events, informational descriptions, and subjective experience.

Neural signals can be measured. Behavioral patterns can be quantified. Participants can describe their experiences.

But these dimensions cannot automatically be treated as equivalent.

Podemos medir correlatos de una experiencia sin medir toda la experiencia.

Triple-Aspect Monism is an ontological proposal, not an established experimental method for detecting consciousness.

Nevertheless, it challenges researchers to recognize the explanatory boundaries of their instruments.

Scientific reduction is necessary for investigation. Ontological reduction is not an automatic consequence of measurement.

5. Complex Systems - When the Collective Exceeds Our Description of Its Parts

Complex systems research examines how interactions among components produce collective patterns.

The work of Giorgio Parisi provides mathematical foundations for understanding disorder, fluctuations, and collective behavior in complex physical systems.

BrainLatam develops related questions in Quem decide quando ninguém está no comando?.

A group can coordinate through temporary leadership, distributed information, or shared instructions.

Yet similar observable behavior may arise through different mechanisms.

Five participants following a fixed leader and five participants negotiating a common decision may both exhibit neural synchronization.

The same measured pattern does not necessarily demonstrate the same social process.

La coordinación no demuestra, por sí sola, libertad, reciprocidad o comprensión compartida.

Hyperscanning must therefore connect neural measurements with behavioral context and alternative explanations.

6. The Dawn of Everything - Must Collective Organization Follow One Model?

David Graeber and David Wengrow, in The Dawn of Everything, question historical narratives that portray centralized hierarchies as inevitable outcomes of human development.

Their interpretations remain open to archaeological and anthropological debate.

BrainLatam explores these questions in O Estado não precisava ter sido assim.

The relevance to neuroscience is methodological.

If researchers investigate only groups with predetermined leadership, they cannot directly infer how participants would behave under alternative organizational conditions.

What scientific questions remain unasked when our experimental worldview assumes that every collective requires permanent direction?

This does not establish that distributed leadership is superior.

It establishes the importance of comparing organizational conditions rather than treating one configuration as universal.

7. Jiwasa - Let It Come, Let It Stay, Let It Be

BrainLatam proposes Jiwasa as an authorial framework for investigating collective agency while preserving individual singularity.

In Jiwasa — Pertencer sem permanecer na mesma posição, we develop a sequence:

Deixa vir → Deixa ficar → Deixa Ser → Pode desobedecer → Transcender-se Ser → Deixa ir.

Allow new information to arrive. Give differences time to be considered. Recognize individual perspectives. Permit disagreement. Revise previous positions. Abandon explanations when evidence no longer supports them.

Cada UM continúa siendo, incluso cuando participa de un Nosotros.

Our earlier reflection, Deus, a Verdade está entre nós, introduces an ontological metaphor:

“God is among us, without being any one of us.”

This is not a theological requirement or scientific demonstration of divinity.

It expresses the possibility that collective understanding emerges through relationships without becoming the exclusive property of one participant.

The relevant scientific challenge is investigating reciprocal influence, dissent, adaptation, and collective problem-solving.

8. Hyperscanning Beyond Synchrony - What Are We Actually Measuring?

Hyperscanning simultaneously records neural activity from two or more participants during shared activities.

EEG investigates electrophysiological dynamics. fNIRS investigates cortical hemodynamic responses.

Multimodal approaches can also include ECG, respiration, movement, behavioral observation, and subjective reports.

De Felice and colleagues (2025) propose Relational Neuroscience as a framework for studying inter-brain dynamics beyond shared sensory processing.

However, neural synchronization does not automatically demonstrate shared consciousness, cooperation, or collective freedom.

A study involving Chinese researchers, published by Li and colleagues (2025), investigated bidirectional information flow during cooperative learning with emergent leadership.

Their work demonstrates that leadership itself can become an experimental variable rather than a fixed assumption.

BrainLatam discusses related methodological opportunities in O que acontece entre dois cérebros quando começamos a agir juntos?.

The question is not how many brains synchronize, but what conditions explain their measurable relationships.

9. Multimodal Protocols - Brain, Heart, Respiration and Behavior

Consider five participants solving an unfamiliar problem.

In condition A, each works independently.

In condition B, all follow one predetermined leader.

In condition C, leadership rotates.

In condition D, participants negotiate their own organization and may revise agreed rules.

Researchers record EEG, fNIRS, ECG, respiration, behavior, participation, disagreement, and decision changes.

The outcomes include neural coupling, physiological regulation, diversity of solutions, and collective performance.

In Corpo — Dois cérebros não bastam: cérebro, coração e relação, BrainLatam examines why multimodal recording improves the investigation of interpersonal processes.

But additional sensors do not automatically solve problems of interpretation.

Different groups may require different strategies. Shared stimuli, movement artifacts, physiological confounds, and statistical dependencies require appropriate controls.

Más datos no significan necesariamente más comprensión.

A rigorous experiment should be reproducible while remaining open to discovering that its original model was incomplete.

10. Relational Connectomic Reserve - A Hypothesis Worth Testing

In A Reserva Conectômica pode estar esperando por um Nós?, BrainLatam examines a recent hypothesis by Brazilian researchers Roberto Lent, Fernanda Tovar-Moll, and Diego Szczupak concerning potential structural reserves for neural plasticity.

We extend the question toward relational experience.

Could different interactions reveal functional possibilities that remain less accessible under other conditions?

This proposed Relational Connectomic Reserve is not an established shared anatomical structure.

Changes in functional connectivity do not demonstrate recruitment of previously unused anatomical connections.

Nevertheless, appropriately designed longitudinal experiments could investigate relationships among learning, social interaction, behavioral flexibility, and neural adaptation.

Una hipótesis científica debe poder encontrar evidencias contrarias.

The purpose is not to confirm Jiwasa in advance, but to investigate measurable consequences of different relational conditions.

11. NeuroDesafio LATAM - The Freedom to Formulate New Scientific Questions

BrainLatam sponsors NeuroDesafio LATAM, supporting opportunities for scientific education and exchange among young Latin American participants.

NeuroBases, NeuroMorfologia, NeuroClínica, and NeuroQuiz contribute to foundational knowledge, anatomical understanding, clinical reasoning, and scientific communication.

Yet the greatest scientific challenge may be learning to question the limits of our own explanations.

A reproducible experiment can produce reliable results about a restricted phenomenon. It cannot automatically establish that the phenomenon has been completely explained.

Decolonial Neuroscience should not replace scientific evidence with cultural convictions.

It should expand who can formulate hypotheses, which contexts are investigated, and how alternative explanations are evaluated.

La ciencia necesita rigor para conocer y libertad para descubrir aquello que todavía no sabemos preguntar.

The future of multimodal hyperscanning is not simply measuring more brains.

It is developing better scientific approaches to understand how living organisms influence one another while remaining individually distinct.

We measure to know, not to become what we measure.

Recortamos para Saber, não para Ser.

La verdad puede emerger entre nosotros sin pertenecer exclusivamente a ninguno de nosotros.

BrainLatam - Multimodal Hyperscanning, Decolonial Neuroscience and Collective Agency.

Scientific and Intellectual References - A Second Reading of the Article

1. Damasio, A., & Damasio, H. (2024). Homeostatic Feelings and the Emergence of Consciousness. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

The Damasios propose that interoceptive feelings and sensory integration are central to understanding consciousness, emphasizing the living organism rather than the isolated brain.

2. Pereira Jr., A. (2023). Introdução à Metafísica do Monismo de Triplo Aspecto. ANPOF.

The Brazilian philosopher develops an ontology involving material processes, information, and sentience, distinguishing physiological measurement from the entirety of subjective experience.

3. De Felice, S., et al. (2025). Relational Neuroscience: Insights from Hyperscanning Research. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 169, 105979.

Introduces Relational Neuroscience and emphasizes the importance of distinguishing genuine interpersonal dynamics from neural alignment explained by shared sensory input.

4. Li, Y., Wang, Y.-J., Su, C., Deng, F., & Pan, Y. (2025). Bidirectional Information Flow in Cooperative Learning Reflects Emergent Leadership. Communications Biology, 8, 1000.

Uses fNIRS hyperscanning to investigate directional neural information flow during cooperative learning, demonstrating that leadership may emerge dynamically during interaction.

5. Gómez-Nava, L., Bon, R., & Peruani, F. (2022). Intermittent Collective Motion in Sheep Results from Alternating the Role of Leader and Follower. Nature Physics, 18, 1494–1501.

Shows how temporary leadership and changing follower relationships can participate in coordinated collective movement.

6. Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Challenges linear accounts of social organization, encouraging researchers to examine alternative structures of collective decision-making rather than assuming fixed hierarchy.

7. Krenak, A. (2022). Futuro ancestral. Companhia das Letras.

Offers a Brazilian Indigenous perspective on the relationships among life, territory, and ecological continuity, expanding the ethical and conceptual questions surrounding situated scientific inquiry.

8. BrainLatam — Jackson Cionek (2026). APUS e Tekoha — Como o mundo entra no corpo e o corpo retorna ao mundo.

Presents APUS and Tekoha as provisional conceptual windows for investigating relationships among spatial orientation, interoception, body, and lived territory.

9. BrainLatam — Jackson Cionek (2026). Jiwasa — Pertencer sem permanecer na mesma posição.

Develops the possibility of collective belonging without fixed positions, proposing openness, disagreement, transformation, and the freedom to leave as dimensions of shared agency.

10. BrainLatam — Jackson Cionek (2026). A Reserva Conectômica pode estar esperando por um Nós?.

Distinguishes the emerging anatomical connectomic-reserve hypothesis from BrainLatam's exploratory proposal concerning relational experiences and potentially underused functional possibilities.

Editorial and scientific note: BrainLatam's concepts of Corpo-Território, APUS–Tekoha, Jiwasa, and Relational Connectomic Reserve are presented as authorial research perspectives, not established experimental findings. Their scientific relevance depends on explicit operational definitions, suitable controls, and reproducible evidence.


NIRS EEG Multimodal Hyperscanning Sfn2026

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