We Measure the Complexity of the Brain. But Do We Measure the Complexity of Living?

Information, entropy, A → B transitions, and the wonder of complex systems.

1. The Forest That Cannot Fit Inside a Window

Imagine observing a forest through a small window.

You identify trees, movements, birds, and changes in light.

With appropriate instruments, you can produce accurate measurements.

Now notice something different: while reading, your organism breathes, regulates its temperature, and participates in events that do not appear on this screen.

Are you aware of all this?

Perhaps a sensation has entered your attention.

Perhaps not.

We do not need to decide in advance what you experience.

But we can investigate a question:

When we transform reality into data, what can we know, and what remains outside the frame?

This question guides our sixth dialogue with Neurobucano and the wonderful organization of complex systems.

2. The Wonder of Complex Systems

Imagine thousands of birds flying together.

One changes direction. Others adjust their movements. New patterns emerge.

No individual needs to know the flock's entire trajectory in advance.

Physicist Giorgio Parisi, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics, contributed to understanding systems in which numerous interactions produce collective behaviors that are difficult to explain through the isolated properties of their components.

But emergence does not necessarily mean the absence of leadership.

Fernando Peruani and colleagues investigated collective movements in which leadership and following roles alternate.

The wonder lies in the relationships.

Now imagine studying a single bird without observing the others.

Your data may be accurate.

But perhaps they cannot explain the flock.

A system displays properties that require investigating what happens between its components.

3. Pernambuco: Entropy, Criticality, and Neural Coding

At the Second Neuroscience Seminar in Pernambuco, Fernanda Selingardi Matias, Mauro Copelli, and Nivaldo Vasconcelos introduced questions about information and neural organization.

Fernanda Matias and colleagues used symbolic analysis to distinguish properties of intracranial recordings during different cognitive tasks.

Mauro Copelli and researchers from the Federal University of Pernambuco investigated maximum-entropy metrics related to identifying critical dynamics.

Nivaldo Vasconcelos brought questions concerning neural coding into the discussion.

These approaches reveal different properties.

Shannon entropy quantifies uncertainty according to a probability distribution.

Criticality investigates characteristics of particular dynamical regimes.

Neural coding examines relationships between neuronal activity and relevant variables.

None of these measures, on its own, represents the entirety of consciousness or human experience.

4. Chaos Is Not Simply Disorder

When we say that the brain operates near chaos, we must ask what this statement means scientifically.

Deterministic chaos, criticality, random fluctuations, and metastability are not synonyms.

A time series may display high variability without demonstrating a critical regime.

Likewise, greater entropy does not automatically mean greater creativity or intelligence.

Measurements depend on scales, models, and experimental conditions.

Perhaps the most important contribution of physics is its ability to formulate specific questions about changing organizations.

Instead of treating the brain as a machine that always operates in the same regime, we can investigate how different activities require functional reorganizations.

But we must demonstrate these transitions experimentally, without using chaos as a universal explanation.

5. Between A and B, a Transformation Takes Place

Imagine entering an unfamiliar environment.

Initially, you observe risks, recognize objects, and search for familiar references.

Later, perhaps you discover possibilities that were unavailable in your first interpretation.

Let us call the initial condition A and the later condition B.

But what happened during A → B?

Our reflection on Hutcheon's 150 seconds introduces a particularly interesting investigation.

The researchers studied EEG activity and oxygen saturation under hypoxic conditions.

During the first 150 seconds of active oxygen desaturation, certain relationships between brain activity and oxygenation differed from those observed later.

This interval belongs to that particular experiment.

It is not a universal duration of cerebral chaos.

Nevertheless, it reveals a fundamental methodological question:

If we measure only A and B, we may lose information about the transformation that made B possible.

6. The Pathway Is Also Part of the Result

Consider a child learning a task.

Initially, assistance is necessary.

Then the child performs some movements independently.

Later, another strategy becomes available.

If we compare only the first and last performances, we may identify improvement.

But how did this change happen?

Which attempts were abandoned?

Which relationships supported new possibilities?

Complex systems research highlights the importance of temporal processes, interactions, and initial conditions.

This also applies to stress.

A rapid response may be appropriate when facing danger but inappropriate when reconsidering a hypothesis.

Our Rock–Scissors–Paper metaphor explores the flexibility needed to move between different activities.

Change is more than the difference between two results.

7. Before Data, There Is a Choice

In Big Data Is Not the World, we developed a sequence:

Reality → Selection → Transduction → Encoding → Data → Model → Inference.

Imagine an EEG recording electrical activity from the scalp.

Researchers choose electrodes, time intervals, filters, and analytical procedures.

The recording may be rigorous and replicable.

Nevertheless, it does not contain the participant's entire experience.

The same applies to fNIRS, images, cognitive tests, and databases.

Latin American researcher Paola Ricaurte demonstrates that algorithmic systems must also be understood through the institutions and power relations involved in their construction.

Before asking whether an algorithm correctly interpreted a dataset, we should ask:

Who decided what deserved to become data?

8. The Screen: A Selection of a Selection

Imagine a forest displayed on an ultra-high-resolution screen.

The camera selected a frame.

Sensors captured particular properties of light.

Algorithms produced a representation.

Now your organism interprets pixels.

The image may communicate extraordinary information.

But it does not contain the forest.

At BrainLatam, we use the formulation:

Screen = a selection of a selection.

This does not mean that digital images are false.

It means that knowing a representation is not equivalent to fully experiencing what it represents.

An entropy graph is also a representation.

It may reveal important properties of brain signals.

But it does not replace the Body-Territory that participated in the experiment.

We isolate aspects of reality to understand them, not to define the whole of Being.

9. Triple-Aspect Monism: One Reality, Different Descriptions

Brazilian researcher Alfredo Pereira Jr. proposes Triple-Aspect Monism as a philosophical interpretation of reality.

In BrainLatam's elaboration, we distinguish physical-biological, experiential, and informational-symbolic aspects.

Imagine listening to music.

We can record your brain activity.

We can ask what you felt.

We can analyze the words used to describe the experience.

These records are not equivalent.

But they can participate in the investigation of the same event.

Triple-Aspect Monism does not constitute experimental proof of a theory of consciousness.

It is a philosophical proposal for investigating how different descriptions may coexist without turning any one of them into the totality of reality.

Measuring a property does not authorize us to replace an entire experience with that measurement.

10. Non-WEIRD Neuroscience Must Change Its Questions

The historical predominance of WEIRD populations in behavioral research has created difficulties for generalization.

But including additional participants should mean more than applying the same tests in new territories.

Brazilian psycholinguist Marcus Maia and colleagues conduct non-WEIRD research with Karajá participants, incorporating opportunities to reflect on language and the processes being studied.

Imagine a device recording eye movements during reading.

Later, participants have the opportunity to examine and discuss the results.

Something has changed in the scientific relationship.

Those who were observed can also participate in understanding what was recorded.

This does not mean replacing experimental validation with opinion.

It means recognizing that participants may contribute questions, experiences, and knowledge the instrument did not capture.

11. When Territory Participates in Brain Activity

In 2024, an international study with substantial Latin American participation analyzed 5,306 people from fifteen countries using EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Researchers investigated differences between estimated brain age and chronological age, considering geographical, socioeconomic, and environmental inequalities.

This does not allow us to conclude that any population has lower cognitive worth or that territory determines an individual's brain.

But it demonstrates the importance of investigating context and diversity when interpreting brain indicators.

Ailton Krenak also invites us to reconsider the separation between humanity and nature.

At BrainLatam, Body-Territory expresses our proposal to understand experience as inseparable from the relationships that sustain life.

This is a philosophical interpretation to be critically articulated with scientific evidence.

12. Can We Measure the Emergence of a We?

Imagine five participants trying to develop a collective solution.

First, each works independently.

Next, they follow a common instruction.

Finally, any participant may propose changes for the others to consider.

We can record EEG, fNIRS, ECG, respiration, and behavior.

We would investigate both coordination and genuine opportunities for disagreement and transformation.

But interbrain synchrony does not prove shared understanding.

Nor does it demonstrate collective consciousness.

At BrainLatam, Jiwasa is our proposal for shared agency among Body-Territories that preserve their uniqueness.

Research could investigate conditions of reciprocity.

It could not declare that Jiwasa had been discovered simply because brain signals became more similar.

The wonder of complex systems also requires recognizing what our measurements cannot determine.

13. Who Interprets What the Collective Experiences?

Return to the forest observed through the window.

You know more about what you were able to record.

But the forest continues to exist beyond the frame.

At BrainLatam, we distinguish:

Experiment → Result → Interpretation → Judgment → Decision.

DOING IS SCIENCE. JUDGING IS POLITICS.

Science investigates mechanisms and tests hypotheses.

Politics participates in collective decisions about priorities, rights, and consequences.

Metacognition allows us to recognize the limits of our own interpretations.

Decolonial Neuroscience must expand both the diversity of participants and their opportunities to formulate and challenge questions.

Perhaps you began reading this article seeking to understand brain complexity.

Perhaps you now recognize other relationships that were absent from your original window.

We do not need to reach the same conclusion.

The wonder of complex systems also lies in recognizing that we can produce shared knowledge without reducing the existence of each Body-Territory to what we can measure.

Jiwasa: Being many without ceasing to Be.

Scientific and Intellectual References - A Second Reading of Blog 06

The references are organized as an independent scientific narrative. Read in sequence, they follow the article's argument: from emergence in complex systems to brain measurement, from A → B transitions to the limitations of data, and finally to the participation of different Body-Territories in producing knowledge.

1. Collective organization can display properties that do not exist in isolated components

PARISI, Giorgio (2022). A maravilha dos sistemas complexos (The Wonder of Complex Systems).

This book introduces the study of systems in which interactions among numerous components produce collective patterns, showing why such phenomena cannot always be explained by examining their parts independently.

GÓMEZ-NAVA, Luis; BON, Richard; PERUANI, Fernando (2022). Intermittent collective motion in sheep results from alternating the role of leader and follower. Nature Physics.

With contributions from Argentine physicist Fernando Peruani, this study demonstrates how collective motion can involve alternating leadership and follower roles, helping distinguish emergence from the supposed universal absence of hierarchy.

2. Latin American neuroscience can transform brain dynamics into informational measurements

DA PAZ, Ícaro R. S. C.; SILVA, Pedro F. A.; DE LUCAS, Helena B.; LIRA, Sérgio H. A.; ROSSO, Osvaldo A.; MATIAS, Fernanda S. (2024). Symbolic information approach applied to human intracranial data to characterize and distinguish different cognitive processes. Physical Review E, 110, 024403.

Researchers from the Federal University of Alagoas apply entropy and symbolic complexity measures to intracranial recordings from five participants, demonstrating how statistical properties can distinguish cognitive activities.

SERAFIM, Felipe; CARVALHO, Tawan T. A.; COPELLI, Mauro; CARELLI, Pedro V. (2024). Maximum-entropy-based metrics for quantifying critical dynamics in spiking neuron data. Physical Review E, 110, 024401.

The research group at the Federal University of Pernambuco investigates maximum-entropy metrics for characterizing critical properties in neuronal spike data, offering tools for studying brain dynamics without equating criticality with consciousness.

NEUROBUCANO (2024). II Seminário de Neurociências em Pernambuco.

The seminar brought together Fernanda Selingardi Matias, Mauro Copelli, and Nivaldo Vasconcelos, connecting symbolic analysis, scaling, and neural coding as different approaches to investigating brain organization.

3. To understand change, we must observe what happens during A → B

HUTCHEON, Evan A. et al. (2023). Associations between spontaneous electroencephalogram oscillations and oxygen saturation across normobaric and hypobaric hypoxia. Human Brain Mapping, 44, 2345–2364.

The study investigates EEG and oxygenation during hypoxia, showing that the initial 150-second phase of active desaturation exhibits relationships different from those observed after stabilization, without establishing a universal duration for brain transitions.

BRAINLATAM — CIONEK, Jackson (2026). O cérebro durante a mudança - os 150 segundos de Hutcheon.

Extends the methodological discussion about what may be lost when we measure only initial and final states, leaving aside the processes through which A becomes B.

4. Data are constructed through selections, and their categories have histories

BRAINLATAM — CIONEK, Jackson (2026). O Big Data não é o mundo - Como a realidade vira dado e o que desaparece antes de uma IA começar a aprender.

Describes the movement from reality through selection, transduction, encoding, and inference, asking which aspects of experience became invisible before they could even become data.

RICAURTE QUIJANO, Paola (2025). Algorithmic Assemblages of Power: AI Harm and the Question of Responsibility. Teknokultura.

This Latin American researcher demonstrates the importance of analyzing AI systems as sociotechnical arrangements shaped by power, institutions, resources, and knowledge, extending the investigation of bias beyond datasets themselves.

5. Physical measurements, lived experiences, and interpretations are not equivalent descriptions

PEREIRA JR., Alfredo — Philosophical foundation; BRAINLATAM (2026). Monismo de Triplo Aspecto (Alfredo Pereira Jr.) Ampliado: Corpo, Experiência e Linguagem como uma Única Realidade.

BrainLatam's interpretation connects physical-biological, experiential, and informational-symbolic aspects, proposing that we recognize different dimensions of an event without treating them as experimentally equivalent descriptions.

6. Including other populations requires reconsidering scientific questions themselves

MAIA, Marcus; CID DE GARCIA, Daniela; GOMES, Juliana Novo (2023/2024). Non-WEIRD (Psycho)Linguistic Endeavors: Theoretical and Metacognitive Research with the Karajá of Central Brazil. Revista Linguíʃtica.

The Brazilian researchers discuss psycholinguistic experiences with Karajá speakers and the importance of metacognitive reflection, showing how linguistic diversity and participation can expand scientific questions.

BRAINLATAM — CIONEK, Jackson (2026). Na linguagem de cada um - Quando devolver o dado não significa que ele voltou.

Develops the contribution of Karajá research to data restitution, proposing that participants should be able to understand and challenge interpretations without replacing scientific rigor with compulsory agreement.

7. Inequality and territory must also be considered when interpreting brain measurements

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH CONSORTIUM INCLUDING AGUSTÍN IBÁÑEZ AND LATIN AMERICAN SCIENTISTS (2024). Brain clocks capture diversity and disparities in aging and dementia across geographically diverse populations. Nature Medicine, 30, 3646–3657.

An analysis of 5,306 participants from fifteen countries, including seven in Latin America and the Caribbean, identifies associations between geographical diversity, socioeconomic conditions, and brain-aging indicators, reinforcing the need to interpret measurements within their contexts.

8. The wonder of complex systems also asks who can transform the collective

BRAINLATAM — CIONEK, Jackson (2026). Quem decide quando ninguém está no comando?.

Connects the organization of animal groups, biomes, and brain networks, distinguishing collective coordination, leadership, and possibilities for participation among different organisms.

BRAINLATAM — CIONEK, Jackson (2026). A maravilha de Ser muitos sem deixar de Ser.

Connects complex systems, APUS, Tekoha, and Jiwasa, asking how collective relationships may expand possibilities without eliminating the autonomy of each Body-Territory.

BRAINLATAM | NEUROBUCANO | W46/2026 | BLOG 06/08