Memory as Living Territory

What remains after an experience?

After a conversation ends, something remains. After a song fades away, something continues to resonate. After we look at a tree, a river, a loved one, or a meteor crossing the sky, the Body-Territory has already received a mark.

That mark may remain silent for a long time.

It may return as a memory.

It may reappear as a sensation.

It may become a word.

It may become Pei Utupe.

It may reorganize the way we perceive the world.

Decolonial Neuroscience proposes that memory is living territory.

Every experience leaves traces within the Body-Territory. Some traces participate in current perception. Others rest outside the attentional field. Even so, they continue to compose future possibilities for reorganization.

In this view, memory is less an archive and more a territory of possibilities.

Utupe, Pei Utupe, and Memory

When something is perceived, it acquires Utupe.

Utupe organizes the spatial representation of experience: image, sound, smell, position, movement, meaning, body, and belonging.

When Utupe becomes integrated with emotion and transforms into felt episodic memory, it becomes Pei Utupe.

Within our concepts:

Pei Utupe is Soul.

Soul corresponds to lived, emotional, embodied memory. It is the remembrance that participates in the intimate history of the Body-Territory.

Meanwhile, Utupe as semantic memory organizes Spirit: names, categories, symbols, narratives, concepts, and shared knowledge.

Thus, memory involves:

Utupe — organized semantic representation.

Pei Utupe — felt episodic memory.

Xapiri — the brightness or qualia of experience.

What Remains When an Experience Ends?

When an experience concludes, its immediate activation may decrease. Attention shifts. Other spaces enter the present. Life continues through walking, studying, working, and conversation.

Yet something remains.

A pathway changes.

A possibility for reactivation remains.

A predisposition to perceive differently emerges.

A mark remains in the territory.

Recent research increasingly views memory through multidimensional representational models, showing that episodic memory, semantic memory, and future imagination exist along interacting dimensions rather than isolated compartments.

This resonates strongly with our proposal.

Memory lives as territory because it can return in many forms:

as an image;

as a word;

as a smell;

as a posture;

as an emotion;

as a dream;

as a gesture;

as a preference;

as a fear;

as a form of care;

as creativity.

The Tree Example

Imagine a child walking with a grandmother beside an ancient tree.

The grandmother tells a story.

The child touches the trunk.

Feels the texture of the bark.

Hears birds singing.

Smells damp soil.

Receives a simple phrase:

“This tree was here before I was.”

The experience passes.

Yet the Body-Territory has been marked.

Years later, that person may study botany, architecture, ecology, environmental policy, or poetry. Upon encountering another ancient tree, that first mark may become active again.

The new tree is perceived with the help of the old one.

The earlier memory participates as an internal territory of meaning.

Here memory becomes future.

It provides material for new perceptions.

DNA Intelligence and Technological Intelligence

DNA Intelligence creates a body capable of marking, forgetting, reactivating, feeling, and reorganizing experiences.

It transforms experiences into possible pathways.

Technological Intelligence records external data: photographs, videos, texts, cloud storage, databases, AI systems, and maps.

Technology stores records.

The Body-Territory transforms marks into existence.

An AI system may store thousands of images of trees.

It may classify species.

It may compare patterns.

It may retrieve information within seconds.

Yet a person who has lived a tree through Pei Utupe carries something different: smell, breathing, affection, history, belonging, posture, emotion, and Xapiri.

AI preserves information.

The Body-Territory preserves experience.

Working Memory and Life Memory

Working memory keeps some spaces illuminated in the present. It allows comparison, combination, reasoning, and action.

Long-term memory maintains territories available for future reorganizations.

Recent studies highlight the continuous exchange between working memory and long-term memory: what remains active in the present contributes to durable memory formation, while stored memories support or interfere with ongoing cognitive activity.

In the language of this series:

attention illuminates certain Utupe in the present.

memory preserves pathways through which Utupe may return.

the Body-Territory determines, in each context, which marks participate in experience.

Body, Memory, and Presence

Episodic memory involves the feeling of having lived something.

It carries a sense of:

“I was there.”

For this reason, body and memory remain deeply connected.

Recent virtual reality studies demonstrate that bodily self-consciousness participates in the formation and retrieval of episodic memories during naturalistic experiences.

This evidence reinforces a central idea:

remembering means partially reoccupying a previously lived space.

When a memory returns, the Body-Territory may change breathing, posture, emotion, attention, and even the sense of time.

Memory reopens a territory.

Scientific Materiality

EEG, fNIRS, HRV, respiration, GSR, EMG, eye-tracking, and behavioral measures can help investigate when past experiences return to participate in present perception.

EEG can register the speed with which previously stored representations become reactivated during recognition, recall, association, or memory updating.

fNIRS can observe cortical metabolic changes when the Body-Territory sustains memories, compares past and present, or reorganizes previous experiences within new contexts.

HRV, respiration, and GSR can indicate when a memory mobilizes autonomic regulation, emotional engagement, and bodily participation, revealing the transition between a memory that is merely known and one that is fully lived again.

EMG can reveal subtle muscular tensions associated with embodied experiences, showing how certain memories continue to influence posture, facial expression, action preparation, and bodily organization.

Eye-tracking can identify how gaze searches for elements capable of reactivating previous representations: faces, objects, landscapes, words, symbols, or familiar territories.

Behavioral measures can reveal how past experiences influence present decisions through approaches, withdrawals, hesitations, preferences, choices, and creative processes.

Together, these tools help investigate how traces left by previous experiences continue participating in the reorganization of the Body-Territory, even when they remain outside the immediate focus of attention.

Closing Reflection

Memory is living territory.

It remains as mark, pathway, and potential.

Some memories enter the present.

Others rest quietly.

All of them can participate in future reorganizations when attention, context, emotion, and belonging invite them back.

The Body-Territory lives through the marks it has received and through the ways it learns to reorganize them.

An experience may pass on the clock.

Yet it continues to exist as a possible territory within life.

Scientific References (Post-2021)

Addis, D. R.; Szpunar, K. K. (2024). Beyond the Episodic–Semantic Continuum: The Multidimensional Model of Mental Representations.
Contribution: Proposes a multidimensional model integrating episodic memory, semantic memory, and future imagination.

Penaud, S. et al. (2023). The Role of Bodily Self-Consciousness in Episodic Memory of Naturalistic Events.
Contribution: Demonstrates the participation of bodily self-consciousness in episodic memory formation and retrieval.

Bartsch, L. M. et al. (2024). The Information Exchange Between Working Memory and Long-Term Memory.
Contribution: Reviews bidirectional interactions between working memory and long-term memory.

Rubin, D. C. (2022). A Conceptual Space for Episodic and Semantic Memory.
Contribution: Proposes a shared conceptual framework for understanding episodic and semantic memory.

Abigail, L. Y. et al. (2025). Long-Term Memory Engrams From Development to Adulthood.
Contribution: Reviews memory engrams and their role in encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and forgetting.

Foundational Principle

Every experience leaves marks within the Body-Territory.

Utupe organizes representation, Pei Utupe organizes Soul, and Xapiri illuminates lived experience.

Memory remains as living territory, continuously shaping future possibilities for perception, belonging, and transformation.