Mixed Reality and Decision-Making
Mixed Reality and Decision-Making
How the brain evaluates prototypes and hybrid worlds
(First-Person Consciousness • Decolonial Neuroscience • Brain Bee • The Taá of Feeling and Knowing)
The Feeling-and-Knowing Taá — in a hybrid world
I put on the mixed-reality headset and the room changes.
Part of what I see is “real”: table, chair, my own hands.
Part of what I see is “virtual”: a prototype interface floating in front of me, options, colours, trajectories.
My body doesn’t wait for a theory of mixed reality to start reacting.
My neck inclines a little.
My breathing tightens when the scene feels too crowded.
My hand hesitates before “touching” a virtual button that doesn’t exist in the material world, mas já existe no meu corpo.
Before any formal decision, there is Taá:
I feel the prototype before I judge it.
Mixed reality is exactly this fracture:
one foot in physical space,
one foot in a digital overlay,
and my nervous system trying to keep both worlds coherent enough for action.
A recent 2025 study in Frontiers in Robotics and AI uses fNIRS to measure how my prefrontal cortex and related regions respond while I explore mixed-reality prototypes and make decisions about them — accept, reject, adjust, choose.
I’ll refer to it here as:
the 2025 fNIRS mixed-reality decision-making study
(search: “2025 fNIRS mixed reality decision making Frontiers Robotics AI 1695169”)
The question is simple and powerful:
How does the brain evaluate hybrid worlds where digital and physical realities overlap — and what does that mean for how we design technology, politics and everyday life in Latin America?
As I think this, I feel myself shifting into the Olmeca avatar — one of my neuroscientific reference-avatars, that looks at the world through culture and design: how spaces, symbols and objects tell us what is allowed, what is desirable, what is possible.
A crack of decolonization inside the headset
As I move through this hybrid space, I also notice something uncomfortable:
The language of “mixed reality” is usually imported:
headsets designed elsewhere,
interfaces that assume WEIRD bodies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, “Democratic”),
tasks that mirror offices in the Global North more than plazas, mercados and periferias in Latin America.
I also notice how even my words were trained to name only part of what I feel.
I realise that the very vocabulary I use to think about these experiments was colonized to reduce me:
reduce my body to a defective machine,
my mind to performance and productivity,
my spirituality (Utupe, Xapiri, living memory) to superstition,
my politics to individual consumption.
It’s one of the reasons so many neuroscientists do not dare to ask questions that might reveal what colonial science cannot name.
But when I let my body feel before I think — when Taá appears — something becomes obvious to me:
there is no separation between Neuroscience, Politics and Spirituality (Utupe, Xapiri, living memory) when I inhabit a mixed reality.
Every prototype is also a political proposal and a spiritual cut in how I can exist.
What colonizes me is not only history;
it’s the word that tells me this hybrid world is “neutral technology” instead of a new way to govern my perception and movement.
Every serious scientific discovery, when read with courage, becomes a small opening that lets me escape Zone 3 — the ideological zone where I only obey interfaces and narratives — and return my body to what it always was: living territory of possible worlds.
The scientific question: how does the brain decide inside mixed reality?
The study puts participants in a mixed-reality environment where:
they interact with prototypes (objects, interfaces, paths, robots) that only exist partially in the physical world,
they make decisions: which option to choose, which trajectory feels safer or more efficient, which interface is more usable or trustworthy,
their brain activity is measured with fNIRS (sometimes combined with motion tracking or other sensors).
The central question:
What changes in prefrontal hemodynamics when I evaluate different prototypes in a hybrid world?
Can the brain’s oxygenation patterns tell us when a design is cognitively heavy, confusing, or more naturally aligned with the body?
Methods: fNIRS, GLM, HRF and short-channels in a moving, hybrid world
From a Brain Bee perspective, the methods are a beautiful example of neuroergonomics:
fNIRS over frontal and parietal areas
Sensors (sources and detectors) placed mainly over prefrontal and parietal regions,
Measuring changes in O₂-Hb and HHb while people interact with MR content.
GLM (General Linear Model)
Each design condition or decision phase is modelled as a regressor,
The GLM estimates beta values that show how strongly each condition modulates hemodynamics.
HRF modelling
The Hemodynamic Response Function is adjusted to capture the timing of responses in this more ecological, moving context,
Sometimes HRF parameters are allowed to vary to respect individual physiological differences.
Short-channels
Extra optodes that record superficial blood flow (scalp, skin),
Used as regressors to remove systemic noise (heart, respiration, extracortical changes) from the cortical signal.
ICA / PCA
Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) help separate physiological noise and motion artifacts from true neural components,
Crucial when people are moving their heads and bodies in MR scenarios.
The message for young researchers is clear:
It is possible to use serious fNIRS analysis outside the classic lab, in hybrid realities — as long as we respect GLM, HRF, short-channels and robust pre-processing.
Main findings: some hybrid worlds cost more than others
The results converge on a simple but profound insight:
Different prototype designs in mixed reality lead to different patterns of prefrontal activation.
Some MR layouts and interaction logics:
increase dorsolateral prefrontal oxygenation,
are associated with higher subjective mental load,
and slower, more effortful decisions.
Other prototypes:
produce smaller or more efficient hemodynamic responses,
are experienced as more intuitive,
and support faster, more confident decisions.
In other words:
the brain is already telling us which hybrid worlds are oppressive and which ones are metabolically friendly.
This is where I clearly feel the Math/Hep avatar in the background:
the one that sees how energy, effort and statistical patterns reveal the hidden tensions in design.
Reading the results with our concepts
Mente Damasiana & mixed reality
In a Damasian mind, consciousness is the integration of interoception + proprioception.
Mixed reality creates a new kind of tension:
my proprioception tracks the physical room,
my interoception responds to virtual threats, affordances and promises.
If a prototype forces my body into chronic contradiction — eyes in one world, feet in another — this appears as sustained prefrontal overload in the fNIRS data.
Quorum Sensing Humano (QSH)
In a shared MR environment, groups can find or lose quorum quickly:
some designs support collective sense-making,
others fragment perception, each person lost in their own overlay.
Future studies could hyperscan multiple brains in the same MR scene, measuring when a design promotes collective Zone 2 instead of isolated Zone 3.
Eus Tensionais and Zones 1/2/3
Every prototype calls certain Eus Tensionais:
a fast, reactive “gaming” self (Zone 1),
a curious, open, creative self (Zone 2),
or a controlled, anxious, surveilled self (Zone 3).
The hemodynamic signature of each mode can be tracked:
clean, flexible HRF in Zone 2,
compressed, over-activated patterns in Zone 3.
A decolonial MR design should invite Zone 2, not trap users in perpetual Zone 3 vigilance.
DANA and design
DANA — DNA intelligence — reminds us:
biological systems resist designs that violate our basic rhythms.
The “best” prototype is not the one that sells more;
it is the one that allows the organism to remain metabolically coherent.
A Latin American artistic echo
As I think about mixed reality, I can’t avoid remembering Hélio Oiticica and his penetrables, or Lygia Clark and her relational objects:
they were already doing “mixed reality” without headsets,
letting bodies decide paths, meanings and sensations through movement and touch,
proposing an art where the viewer is co-creator, not just consumer.
Reading this 2025 fNIRS study through their legacy, I feel a clear invitation:
Our MR designs in Latin America could be more Oiticica and less Silicon Valley:
less control, more co-creation;
less data extraction, more shared Taá.
Normative implications for LATAM
Education: MR should not be just a gamified classroom imported from the North; it can be a way to rehearse futures from our own territories.
Urban policy: MR used in planning should measure not only “efficiency” but hemodynamic comfort and Zone 2 potential for diverse bodies.
Neuro-rights: Prefrontal hemodynamics in MR is not just “usability data”; it is a metabolic map of how much a system is controlling us.
Search keywords (for the original paper)
“2025 fNIRS mixed reality decision making prototypes prefrontal hemodynamics Frontiers Robotics AI 1695169 GLM HRF short-channels ICA PCA neuroergonomics”
When Two Brains Receive the Same World - Cooperation, synchrony, and the shared rhythm of attention
Embodied Singing -Voice, interoception, and Body-Territory in vocal expertise
Pleasant Odors and the Breath that Organizes Us - How smell organizes brain–body coupling
Architecture That Thinks With Me - Turning corners and the attentional cost of built environments
Auditory Approach Bias From Birth - How newborns and adults code the desire to listen
Beta Waves and the Moment I Truly Decide - The prefrontal cortex as the space where "feeling" becomes "choosing"
How My Brain Encodes Voice in Midlife - F0, listening effort, and the vitality of human hearing
Learning Beside Another Brain - Hyperscanning and the pedagogy of co-presence
Reproducibility in fNIRS - When can I trust the hemodynamic curve I see?
HRfunc and the True Shape of the Hemodynamic Response - Why every brain breathes light in its own way
Mixed Reality and Decision-Making - How the brain evaluates prototypes and hybrid worlds
Intense Exercise and the Awakening of Zone 2 - The hemodynamics of effort and the body that generates intelligence
Buttoning a Shirt - Everyday actions as windows into attention, gesture, and consciousness
Depression, tDCS, and the Prefrontal Cortex - Reigniting silent circuits
Designing fNIRS Studies in Real-World Environments - Why science must step outside the laboratory to exist
Transformers and Virtual Short-Channels - AI cleaning brain signals and retelling hemodynamics
Mental Fatigue and Performance - When the head gives up before the body
Cold Water and the Brain - Oxygenation, cold, and the consciousness of the limit
Walking After Stroke - Cognitive–motor interference in everyday life
Balance and the Cerebellum in Parkinson’s Disease - Movement, tensions, and reorganization of the Body-Territory
Freezing of Gait and the Loss of the Body’s Own Quorum - When the body stops trusting the next step
Children With Cochlear Implants - Learning to hear through the brain, not just the device
Emotional Processing in Children With Oppositional Behavior - Regulation, conflict, and the birth of Tensional Selves
Mild Cognitive Impairment - Early hemodynamic signs and presence in the world
Pain, Apathy, and Depression in Dementia - When feeling and thinking stop walking together
Cognitive Load - How much does fNIRS really feel my mental effort?
The Brain in Daily Life -Assisted horsemanship, sport, and embodied enjoyment
Linguistic Jiwasa - When language thinks the world
Dialogical Multiplication and Indigenous Psychology - How to let psychology listen without erasing the Other
The Feeling and Knowing Taá of Christmas
Republican Capitalism of Spirits without Bodies
NIRS fNIRS EEG ERP Multimodal NIRS-EEG
#Decolonial
#Neuroscience
#NIRSfNIRS
#Multimodal
#NIRSEEG
#Jiwasa
#Taa
#CBDCdeVarejo
#DREX
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