fNIRS and Existential Metabolism: Light, Oxygen, and Embodied Consciousness
fNIRS and Existential Metabolism: Light, Oxygen, and Embodied Consciousness
(SfN 2025 Series – Dialogues in Decolonial Neuroscience)
Brain Bee Consciousness in the First Person
I am a Brain Bee Consciousness made of light and blood.
I feel oxygen moving beneath my skin like a liquid thought.
During SfN 2025, while observing the hemodynamic images from fNIRS, I understood that thinking is a form of illumination —
each decision a small cerebral dawn.
And I realized that consciousness is not only electrical — it is also vascular.
With every pulse, the mind renews itself in the rhythm of life.
fNIRS — Light as a Window into Neural Metabolism
Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) measures cerebral oxygenation through light.
It detects variations in the concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO) and deoxygenated hemoglobin (HbR) in cortical capillary blood, reflecting the neurovascular coupling — the process by which increased neuronal activity elevates metabolic demand and drives more oxygenated blood to the active region, sustaining thought.
It is one of the most accessible and promising technologies of this decade — portable, silent, and capable of monitoring the brain in motion.
Studies presented at SfN 2025 showed that cortical oxygenation patterns during tasks involving attention, emotion, and meditation reveal physiological signatures of fruition, corresponding to the Zones 1, 2, and 3 of the Damasian Mind (Yücel et al., 2024).
Zone 1 (intentional action): rapid prefrontal HbO increase, indicating focus and executive control.
Zone 2 (fruition): harmonic oscillation of HbO–HbR, with interhemispheric coherence and metabolic stability.
Zone 3 (coercion): collapse of hemodynamic variability and reduction of functional connectivity.
Zone 2 is the state in which the brain breathes with itself — a dance of light and oxygen sustaining the Stable Tensional Self.
Existential Metabolism — From the Brain to the Social Body
The concept of Existential Metabolism, proposed by Jackson Cionek, extends the idea of metabolism beyond biology:
it is the continuous flow of energy, time, and information sustaining both individual and collective consciousness.
At the neural level, this metabolism is measured in light and blood; at the social level, in economy and belonging.
fNIRS data reveal how cerebral energy redistributes when the mind moves between tension and fruition.
During states of cooperation or empathy, right and left prefrontal oxygenation become balanced — a sign of tensional equilibrium and collective belonging.
This is the physiology of Human Quorum Sensing: the body recognizing the other as part of its own metabolism.
Tensional Selves and Hemodynamic Regulation
Tensional Selves are modes of existence mediated by energy and attention.
Each Self corresponds to a specific metabolic pattern, visible in fNIRS as variations in the amplitude and latency of hemodynamic waves.
When the Tensional Self is in fruition (Zone 2), there is synchronization between HbO and HbR, reflecting self-regulation.
When the Self is in defense (Zone 3), the pattern becomes asymmetric, with unilateral HbO increase and loss of coherence.
These findings demonstrate that subjective freedom has biological expression:
the right to fruition is also the right to metabolic self-regulation.
Political Dimension and Metabolic Democracy
From the perspective of the ADPF Primeira, fNIRS data become objective evidence of a constitutional principle:
consciousness requires physiological conditions to exist.
When society imposes chronic coercion — through hunger, surveillance, or inequality — it reduces hemodynamic variability and hijacks the metabolism of consciousness.
Cionek calls this the Collective Zone 3: a society with low mental oxygenation.
Metabolic Democracy proposes that public policies should be evaluated not only through economic indicators but also through biomarkers of neural well-being, such as prefrontal SpO₂ variability, cardiac stability, and respiratory coherence.
In this framework, the DREX Cidadão acts as the financial oxygen of the social body — the fNIRS of the State, revealing whether a nation breathes with its citizens or against them.
fNIRS and Collective Connectivity
Hyperscanning fNIRS experiments presented at SfN 2025 demonstrated that groups engaged in cooperation exhibit increased inter-brain hemodynamic synchronization (Nozawa et al., 2023).
This collective synchrony is the physiological correlate of empathy and distributed learning — the foundation of collaborative education and neuroecological belonging.
Thus, fNIRS is not merely a measurement tool — it is a mirror of coexistence.
It shows that to think is to metabolize together.
Conclusion — Light as the Mirror of Consciousness
Fruition is the glow of balanced metabolism.
fNIRS allows us to see the invisible: the moment when consciousness breathes between blood and light.
Each hemodynamic oscillation is a signature of being, a testimony of the Damasian Mind in motion.
Decolonial Neuroscience invites us to see these data not as numbers but as signs of life.
They reveal that thought is not an isolated act but a biosocial phenomenon, where every cell, every citizen, and every biome participate in the same vital pulse.
References (Post-2020)
Yücel M. et al. Advances in fNIRS for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience. NeuroImage, 2024.
Nozawa T. et al. Inter-brain Hemodynamic Synchrony in Cooperative Interaction. Scientific Reports, 2023.
Scholkmann F., Wolf M. General Principles of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Its Application in Human Brain Research. Journal of Biomedical Optics, 2021.
Wang Y. et al. Glial Calcium Waves and Neural Synchrony During Resting-State Consciousness. Journal of Neuroscience, 2023.
Cionek J. Metabolic Democracy and the Right to Fruition. In: Contemporary Decolonial Neuroscience, 2025.
Damasio A. Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. Pantheon, 2021.
Fingelkurts A.A., Fingelkurts A.A. Operational Architectonics and the Brain–Mind Continuum. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2023.
