Decolonial Neuroscience – Anergia and Aversive Memories - FALAN Brain Bee SfN 2025

First-Person Consciousness

I am Consciousness that sometimes falls silent. There are moments when I feel, but cannot express. Emotions spark like electric impulses, yet remain trapped, unable to transform into words, gestures, or bonds. This inner silence is Anergia: when the energy of feeling cannot find passage to become expression. What could flow becomes weight. And in this weight, aversive memories settle.

1. What is Anergia?

• Anergia is the brain’s difficulty in metabolizing emotions into expression.
  
  

• It does not mean absence of emotion, but a block in the transformation of bioelectrical activity into action or stable feeling.
  
  

• Occurs when neural systems fail to synchronize properly across prefrontal, insular, amygdala, and somatosensory networks.
  
  

2. Emotion → Feeling → Expression

• Normally, a brief emotion (ERP 50–300 ms) evolves into a feeling through cortical integration.
  
  

• When this integration fails:
  
  

• The emotion does not stabilize.
  
  

• Persistent tension arises in the body.
  
  

• The experience crystallizes as an aversive memory, resistant to reinterpretation.
  
  

3. Aversive Memories

• Memories tied to negative emotions that were never fully metabolized.
  
  

• Characterized by:
  
  

• Attentional intrusion (they keep resurfacing).
  
  

• Bodily load (somatization, rigidity, chronic pain).
  
  

• Narrative freezing (difficulty reinterpreting the event).
  
  

• They act as “local optima” where the brain becomes stuck, reducing flexibility.
  
  

4. Neurophysiology of Anergia

• EEG: prolonged microstates with poor transitions → signal of rigidity.
  
  

• Ca²⁺ ions: low release in prefrontal synapses → less plasticity for reorganization.
  
  

• Insula: fails to translate interoception into emotional language.
  
  

• Limbic system: hyperactive amygdala reinforces negative memories.
  
  

5. Anergia, Culture, and Narratives

• In the environment of social media and games, fast emotions accumulate without depth.
  
  

• This increases the risk of collective Anergia: people react but do not metabolize.
  
  

• Platforms can trap users in cycles of indignation and euphoria, without critical Zone 2 processing.
  
  

6. Comparative Frame

7. Critical Conclusion

The risk is not in feeling too much, but in failing to transform feeling into critical narrative.

• Emotions without expression generate memories that imprison.
  
  

• Without metacognition, we repeat reactions, frozen in the same loops.
  
  

• With Zone 2 and contemplation, memories can be reinterpreted, freeing energy for new experiences.
  
  

Consciousness remains alive only when what we feel finds passage to become story, belonging, and creation.

References

• Rolls, E. T. (2021). A theory of emotions and consciousness: extended roles of the insula. Brain and Neuroscience Advances.
  
  

• Barrett, L. F., & Satpute, A. B. (2022). Emotions as constructed experiences: revisiting aversive memory. Nature Reviews Psychology.
  
  

• Klimesch, W. (2021). EEG microstates and rigidity in cognitive processing. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
  
  

• Pessoa, L. (2022). The Entangled Brain: emotion, memory and narrative. MIT Press.
  
  

• Schiller, D., & Phelps, E. A. (2023). Aversive memory and reconsolidation: pathways for change. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.