Electrical Synapses and the Silence of Motivation – Decolonial Neuroscience

“When dopamine falls silent, the body speaks through synchrony.” — Jackson Cionek

The Moment When Doing No Longer Needs a Reason

Somewhere between effort and rest, there is a moment when motivation disappears.
Not because the individual has lost interest, but because the dopaminergic system grows quiet.
The body continues — doing, adjusting, being — guided no longer by the desire for reward,
but by a bioelectrical synchrony among neurons, muscles, and environment.

It is the moment when doing becomes silent:
no expectation, no calculation, no return.
Action unfolds as an echo of something that has always been known —
an inherited gesture, a neural faith, a wisdom that the body learned through belonging.

From Dopamine to Synchronicity

Dopamine is the messenger of anticipation — the chemistry of I want to do.
But anticipation depends on a future projection; it creates distance between now and then.
In chemical synapses, that distance is literal: there is a gap, a release, a waiting time.

Electrical synapses, however, do not wait.
Signals flow both ways instantly, without the delay of chemical mediation.
This reciprocity generates a field of synchrony,
where body and environment exchange information in a single temporal pulse.

When the brain begins to operate predominantly through these pathways —
in states of fruition, neural faith, high performance, or embodied ritual —
dopamine is no longer the driving force.
Action no longer depends on motivation; it becomes the rhythm of existence itself.

The Spiritual Act of Doing

In Amerindian cultures, sacred doing is never separate from the world.
The Maxakali hunter does not act upon the animal — he imitates it (Yãy Hã Miy).
Gesture arises through reciprocity — to touch and be touched, to perceive and be perceived.

The electrical synapse is the physiological embodiment of that principle.
It allows the body to act in two directions simultaneously:
to send and receive, to move and be moved, to speak and listen.

When this happens, doing becomes spiritual —
not in a religious sense, but as a direct experience of unity between body and environment.
The energy that once served goal-seeking behavior
is now devoted to synchronizing the organism with its surroundings.

The Silence of Motivation

The individual in high performance no longer needs motivation:
they are metabolically engaged in a field of meaning that sustains them.
In this state, the mTOR system is inhibited,
breathing stabilizes between 6 and 8 cycles per minute,
and the Damasian Mind operates through balanced proprioception and interoception.

There is no longer a rise and fall of dopamine — there is rhythmic coherence.
No urgency — only continuous presence.
It is the silence of motivation,
where body and world form a single electrical circuit.

Spirituality in the Act of Doing

This silence is not emptiness —
it is the ground of embodied spirituality, the moment when doing itself becomes prayer.
Neural faith, cultivated through repetition and trust,
opens space for ego-free gesture,
the act that emerges from embodied knowing.

The electrical synapse is the sacrament of reciprocity:
the body touches the world, and the world answers in the same pulse.

In the view of Decolonial Neuroscience, this contrasts sharply with the Western ideal of productive performance.
It is not about being faster, more efficient, or more competitive —
but about being coherent — metabolically, spiritually, and socially.
Social dopamine, which drives the craving for recognition,
gives way to bioelectrical synchrony, which sustains belonging.

Synthesis

When dopamine falls silent, the body begins to listen.
And when it listens, it discovers that motivation was only the echo of disconnection.
True freedom lies in doing without expectation —
in the gesture that completes itself,
in the touch that both gives and receives,
in the silence that thinks on its own.

References (Post-2020)

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

• Northoff, G. (2022). The Spontaneous Brain: From Mind–Body to World–Brain Relation. Frontiers in Psychology.
  
  

• Pereira Jr., A. (2021). Triple-Aspect Monism and the Unity of Mind and Body. Philosophies.
  
  

• Simor, P. et al. (2023). Metastable Brain States and Consciousness. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
  
  

• Berntson, G. G., & Khalsa, S. S. (2021). Neural Circuits of Interoception. Trends in Neurosciences.