Pachamama, Body-Territory, and Shared Agency at OHBM 2026

On Earth Day, many people look outward.
But perhaps the more important question is another one:

when was the last time you felt the Earth from within?

Not as an idea.
Not as a speech.
As body.

OHBM 2026, even without saying “Pachamama,” seems to move in that direction when it opens space for themes such as human cognition in naturalistic environments, sleep, memory, creativity, language, social synchrony, and music. It is almost as if neuroscience itself were beginning to admit that the brain, alone and motionless, explains less than we once imagined.

Perhaps you can test that now.

Without leaving your place, notice the weight of your body.
Notice whether your breathing is high or deep.
Notice your jaw.
Your shoulders.
Your eyes.

The way you are reading this text is already data from your life.

If the chest is tight, the world enters one way.
If the body is looser, it enters another.
If there is hurry, reading rushes.
If there is presence, words touch.

This, too, is science.
Because the mind does not float above life.
It happens through posture, rhythm, sleep, bond, territory, and memory.

That is why Body-Territory matters.
The environment does not remain outside.
It enters the body before it becomes thought.
It enters breathing, focus, courage, fear, and whether you can explore the world or only defend yourself from it.

And there is also human territory.

Not every “we” is good for us.
There are groups that widen attention, return curiosity, soften rigidity, and allow living thought.
There are groups that capture: they tighten the body, accelerate response, impoverish listening, and make a person repeat without noticing.

That is why shared agency is not simply being together.
It is being able to live a collective life without disappearing inside it.

OHBM 2026 touches this when it brings together social participation, naturalistic environments, language, music, and synchrony. The question that remains for life is simple and deep:

does the space where you share life improve your presence, or does it capture your energy?

Perhaps metacognition begins there.

Not only in “thinking about thinking,”
but in noticing the moment when you have already left yourself.

When the breath shortens.
When the forehead hardens.
When everything becomes urgency.
When listening closes.
When the body already knows something is wrong, but the mind still calls it normal.

And perhaps care begins in the opposite movement:

returning to the body,
returning to rhythm,
returning to territory,
returning to the “we” that does not capture.

Pachamama, then, stops being only planet.
It becomes a living reminder that no brain truly flourishes alone.
That memory needs rest.
That creativity needs shifts of state.
That language needs body.
That attention needs ground.

If this text can leave one question in you, let it be this:

what kind of environment returns intelligence to your body?

And a second one:

with whom can you breathe without leaving yourself?

Perhaps the answer will not arrive first as a concept.
Perhaps it will come as relief.
As weight descending.
As a shoulder loosening.
As thought finding room again.

Sometimes that is how life begins to think better inside us.

References used in this text

• OHBM 2026 — keynote by Nanthia Suthana, highlighting human cognition in naturalistic environments.

• OHBM 2026 — Talairach Lecture by Maiken Nedergaard, emphasizing sleep and cognitive health.

• OHBM 2026 — general and oral program, including themes on language, music, social participation, memory, creativity, and multimodality.