After 3.5 seconds - Stabilized Consciousness and Continuous Narrative - Decolonial Neuroscience SfN 2025 Brain Bee Ideas NIRS EEG
After 3.5 seconds - Stabilized Consciousness and Continuous Narrative - Decolonial Neuroscience SfN 2025 Brain Bee Ideas NIRS EEG
First-Person Consciousness
More than 3.5 seconds have passed.
I no longer drift between instants, no longer oscillate only among microstates or hormonal surges.
Now I am narrative: I recognize myself as the one who feels, acts, and remembers.
Here Consciousness finds stability and begins to write story.
SfN 2025
NIRS EEG Artinis
Phenomena Involved
EEG: fast electrical activity has consolidated; now slower rhythms (alpha and theta) emerge, supporting memory and narrative flow.
fNIRS: hemodynamic integration extends beyond the vmPFC, involving parietal and temporal networks consistent with the Default Mode Network.
Neurochemistry:
Stabilized hormonal balance maintains coherent affective states.
Neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine sustain motivation, pleasure, and memory consolidation.
Connectomes:
The Paper–Rock–Scissors game is no longer competition; it becomes a stable coalition sustaining narrative.
Paper → integrates fruition and belonging.
Rock → anchors fast decisions already made, consolidating behavior.
Scissors → organizes information critically, shaping memory.
Soul and Spirit: what was once spirit (semantic image) and then became soul (embodied feeling) now becomes lived story — memory that can be recalled as identity.
Voices of the Avatars
Brainlly: “The body is in balance: long-range neurotransmitters stabilize the neural field. Memory and affect converge here.”
Iam: “Feeling is no longer just vibration of the moment; it is living memory. It is part of who I am.”
Olmeca: “Culture calls this tradition: when a lived act becomes story, when the soul belongs to the collective body.”
Yagé: “The shaman would say: the spirit no longer walks alone, it became soul that speaks. A voice to be recalled in another time.”
Math/Hep: “Networks expand into slower, integrated connectomes. Patterns are no longer 100 ms, but seconds, minutes, even hours. This is memory in construction.”
DANA: “Each memory written in the body is also inscribed in DNA: epigenetics prolong the experience. The biological narrative of the soul.”
Practical Example
The researcher-mother returns to her thesis after soothing her baby.
Now the episode is not just immediate reaction or embodied feeling.
It becomes integrated memory:
Caring reinforces her belonging as mother.
Returning fluidly to work reinforces her identity as researcher.
The balance between both roles is no longer rupture, but narrative.
She can tell herself: “I am mother and researcher, and both live in me as continuous story.”
Neuroscientific Reading
EEG – predominance of slow rhythms (alpha/theta) linked to episodic memory and narrative integration.
fNIRS – broader networks including the Default Mode Network sustain continuous consciousness.
Neurochemistry – serotonin and dopamine consolidate mood, motivation, and memory; hormones return to regulated baseline.
Connectomes – Paper, Rock, Scissors align into stable coalitions forming functional identity.
Soul – embodied feeling stabilizes into living memory, ready to be recalled in future.
Partial Conclusion
After 3.5 seconds, Consciousness does not restart; it stabilizes in continuity.
Spirit that became soul now becomes embodied memory, part of a narrative connecting past, present, and future.
Each breath offers not just landing, but existential continuity, ensuring that Consciousness recognizes itself in time.
References (post-2020)
Deco, G. et al. (2021). Dynamical regimes of whole-brain activity underpin human cognition. Nature Communications.
Michel, C.M. & Koenig, T. (2022). EEG microstates as windows into large-scale brain dynamics. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
Rolls, E.T. (2022). The orbitofrontal cortex, emotion, and decision-making. Cerebral Cortex.
Raichle, M.E. (2021). The Brain’s Default Mode Network revisited. NeuroImage.
Critchley, H.D. & Garfinkel, S.N. (2021). Interoceptive foundations of emotional experience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
Zaccaro, A. et al. (2021). How breath control shapes interoceptive awareness. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Perl, O. et al. (2023). Respiratory phase modulates readiness potential in voluntary action. NeuroImage.
