Could the Brain's Reserve Also Depend on the Relationships We Cultivate?
Could the Brain's Reserve Also Depend on the Relationships We Cultivate?
Remember someone who helped you learn or recover an ability. Now try to remember where it happened. How much of that achievement belongs to your brain — and how much became possible through the relationship and environment you shared?
BrainLatam Special Series | 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition at UFABC — 2026
WHO PARTICIPATED IN WHAT YOU LEARNED?
Perhaps you remember someone who taught you something important.
A patient teacher. A family member who held your bicycle. Someone who stayed beside you while you relearned a movement.
Try to recover that experience.
The voice. The gestures. The temperature. The place. The feeling of finally succeeding.
Perhaps you learned after many attempts. But another person participated in creating the conditions under which that possibility emerged.
Could part of what we call our ability also depend on the relationships we manage to build?
This question accompanies the 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), scheduled for November 16–19, 2026, under the theme “The Brain in Context: Contemporary Challenges in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience.”
It takes us from brain connectivity to early caregiving, from collective learning to the architecture of schools.
DOES THE BRAIN HAVE PATHWAYS THAT REMAIN AVAILABLE?
In 2026, Roberto Lent, Fernanda Tovar-Moll, and Diego Szczupak presented the hypothesis of connectomic reserve in the journal Brain.
The researchers propose investigating whether certain neural circuits, including exuberant connections formed during development, could provide opportunities for functional reorganization.
Imagine a city with several routes connecting its neighborhoods.
When one passage becomes compromised, other routes might help maintain circulation.
The metaphor has limitations: brain plasticity depends on far more complex biological mechanisms.
Connectomic reserve remains a hypothesis requiring experimental validation.
But we can add another question:
Which experiences contribute to building, preserving, and mobilizing the possibilities an organism develops?
This question does not replace neural investigation. It invites us to expand the conditions we observe.
BEFORE LEARNING, THE INFANT ENCOUNTERS ANOTHER BODY
Imagine an infant crying.
Someone approaches, offers food, changes the infant's position, or responds with their voice.
The infant moves. Breathing may change. The caregiver also adjusts their gestures.
Two organisms participate in an event that changes their conditions.
Allostasis involves physiological adjustments through which an organism responds to and prepares for demands. Coregulation involves reciprocal influences between organisms during an interaction.
The concepts are related but distinct.
At BrainLatam, we have already explored this perspective in the article Biobehavioral Synchrony and Allostasis: When One Body Helps Another Body Build a World.
An infant does not need to become independent before beginning to learn.
Development takes place through relationships that also influence physiological regulation.
Learning begins in an organism that must continue living while it learns.
WHAT DOES EXCLUSION CHANGE IN AN INFANT?
In 2026, Niloofar Goharbakhsh and Louisa Kulke investigated infants aged five to seven months and their caregivers during a game involving opportunities for participation and exclusion.
The preregistered study used EEG hyperscanning, recording brain activity simultaneously in caregiver–infant dyads.
In an exploratory theta-power analysis involving 34 infants, increased theta power was observed during exclusion compared with a condition in which it was simply not their turn.
Caregivers did not show the same pattern.
Interbrain synchronization also did not increase across conditions in a generalized way.
Two organisms can participate in the same event while displaying different neural responses.
The findings indicate early sensitivity to social exclusion cues and are compatible with interpretations involving coregulation.
However, they do not demonstrate a conscious sense of belonging equivalent to that experienced by adults.
Nor do they establish that greater neural synchronization necessarily represents better interaction.
TEACHING MAY MEAN PRESERVING AND TRANSFORMING TOGETHER
On October 30, 2026, Paulo Barraza, from the University of Chile, and Igor Parra published a theoretical perspective on teaching and cumulative culture.
They propose understanding teaching as a specialized organization of coordination between people.
Imagine someone teaching another person to make a tool.
One demonstrates. The other experiments.
The material responds unexpectedly.
Both adjust their movements.
According to the authors, culture can persist because generations preserve and transform ways of acting together.
From this perspective, teaching extends beyond the simple transmission of information.
The article does not establish the existence of a relational connectomic reserve.
But it allows us to ask:
Could an acquired ability also depend on the possibility of reconstructing the coordination through which it first became accessible?
CAN AN ABILITY REEMERGE BETWEEN US?
Imagine someone who learned a particular piece of music while playing with another person.
Years later, they find it difficult to perform alone.
When someone begins playing alongside them, some movements reemerge.
This scene is illustrative, not an experimental finding from the studies cited.
It allows us to distinguish having an ability from being able to express it in a particular situation.
Perhaps assistance provides cues. Perhaps familiarity changes attention. Perhaps coordination makes other strategies possible.
At BrainLatam, we propose investigating these possibilities under the concept of Relational Connectomic Reserve.
This is an original hypothesis, not yet demonstrated as a neurobiological mechanism.
Our proposal is to investigate how relationships may participate in the development, preservation, recovery, and expression of abilities throughout life.
ALLOSTASIS PARTICIPATES IN THE CONDITIONS FOR LEARNING
Now imagine that infant entering elementary school.
The child continues regulating temperature, hunger, thirst, movement, and responses to social conditions.
But now encounters different people, schedules, rules, and spaces.
In 2024, Latin American researchers including Joaquín Migeot, Carolina Panesso, Claudia Duran-Aniotz, Agustín Ibáñez, and Sebastián Lipina proposed investigating allostasis in relation to inequalities and environmental conditions throughout development.
Their contributions help us recognize that social experiences may also participate in organisms' physiological trajectories.
This does not mean that school difficulties can be explained exclusively by stress.
It means that we can ask:
How much of an observed difficulty depends on the ability being investigated, and how much may depend on the conditions under which that ability must be expressed?
The answer requires investigation, not assumption.
FROM THE BATHROOM TO THE CLASSROOM
Imagine a child who needs to use the bathroom during an activity.
The facilities are inadequate. Privacy or accessibility is lacking.
Perhaps the child postpones going.
Perhaps participation is interrupted.
Now imagine a clean, functional bathroom suited to that child's needs.
The environment has changed a concrete opportunity for participation.
According to WHO and UNICEF, approximately 460 million school-age children lacked access to usable basic sanitation services at school in 2025.
Improving these facilities does not automatically guarantee a particular cognitive gain.
But nutrition, water, hygiene, comfort, and accessibility participate in the conditions under which learning happens.
The cognitive experience of school does not begin only at the desk.
It also begins in spaces that allow Body-Territories to remain, move, and encounter others.
CAN NEUROARCHITECTURE EXPAND POSSIBILITIES?
At BrainLatam, we have spent years investigating relationships between neuroarchitecture, biophilia, and physiological responses to built environments.
Now we can broaden the question.
A quiet classroom may support certain activities.
A schoolyard may allow movement and exploration.
Accessible furniture can transform a barrier into a pathway.
But no environment offers identical possibilities to everyone.
A configuration considered efficient may benefit some participants while making the experience more difficult for others.
In relational neuroarchitecture, we do not need to seek one universally perfect space.
We can investigate which configurations expand opportunities for different Body-Territories to participate.
Architecture does not replace teachers, relationships, or pedagogical practices.
It participates in the conditions under which those relationships can occur.
INEQUALITIES ALSO PARTICIPATE IN THIS HISTORY
In 2025, Joaquín Migeot and colleagues investigated the social exposome of 2,211 participants from six Latin American countries.
The study examined conditions accumulated throughout life, including education, food insecurity, financial resources, and access to healthcare.
It found associations between adverse social exposures and poorer indicators of cognition and brain health.
The sample was not representative of the entire Latin American population.
The findings also do not demonstrate the existence of a relational connectomic reserve.
But they help explain why social trajectories must be included in research on aging and dementia.
An organism reaches old age carrying histories of opportunity, hardship, relationships, and material conditions.
Biology remains fundamental. The history of the conditions under which it unfolded also deserves investigation.
THE LABORATORY ALSO PARTICIPATES IN THE EXPERIMENT
Imagine two participants arriving at the same laboratory.
One knows the equipment and feels curious.
The other has endured an exhausting journey and encounters unfamiliar procedures.
Both receive identical instructions.
But their experiences may differ.
At BrainLatam, we propose understanding each participant as a Body-Territory (Corpo-Território), an indivisible unit of existence, sensitivity, and participation in the world.
Metaphorically, the laboratory can be understood as an Artificial Biome: an environment of material, sensory, technological, and social relationships.
This does not replace the ecological definition of a biome or imply that every laboratory causes stress.
Experimental standardization remains essential.
But we can add another question:
Can a protocol be identical for everyone while the experience of participating in it differs from person to person?
HOW COULD WE INVESTIGATE A RELATIONAL RESERVE?
We could compare individual learning, standardized assistance, and collaborative interaction.
We could observe acquisition, retention, and transfer of abilities.
We could investigate familiarity with environments and physiological differences.
EEG, fNIRS, ECG, respiration, and behavioral measures would provide complementary information.
None of these techniques directly measures a relational connectomic reserve.
Appropriate experimental controls, longitudinal assessments, and operational hypotheses would be necessary.
The central challenge would be distinguishing temporary improvements in performance from lasting transformations in abilities.
At this intersection of neuroscience, education, and built environments, BrainLatam contributes by connecting researchers with technologies from Artinis & NIRx and Brain Products.
But instruments remain means rather than ends.
Discovery also depends on the questions we are able to formulate.
JIWASA: BELONGING WITHOUT CEASING TO BE
At BrainLatam, we use Jiwasa to propose shared agency that preserves the uniqueness of participants.
A collective can support learning.
It can also impose answers and restrict possibilities.
Therefore, being accompanied does not necessarily mean participating.
Barraza's contribution invites us to investigate how coordination is preserved and transformed.
The experiment with infants shows that opportunities for participation can be accompanied by measurable neural responses from early life.
Allostasis adds physiological conditions.
Neuroarchitecture adds the spaces in which encounters occur.
Our hypothesis proposes investigating these dimensions without reducing them to a single mechanism.
WHO STILL PARTICIPATES IN WHAT WE ARE?
Return to the person you remembered at the beginning.
Perhaps they are far away.
Perhaps you can still hear their voice when facing a difficulty.
Remember the place where that encounter happened, too.
A classroom, a square, a workshop, a school.
The abilities we use have histories.
Connectomic reserve proposes investigating available neural connections.
Relational Connectomic Reserve adds another question:
How many abilities may remain possible but require different bodily, relational, and environmental conditions to become accessible again?
Jiwasa: the possibility of Being many without anyone having to cease Being.
About This Series
This article is part of a special series by BrainLatam, a sponsor of the 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), scheduled for November 16–19, 2026, in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil.
The article engages with topics announced by Felipe C. Ribeiro and Lizzie Shephard, connecting Brazilian and Latin American research on connectivity, learning, allostasis, development, brain health, and neuroarchitecture.
The original conceptual formulations presented here do not necessarily represent the positions of the researchers or event organizers.
Official event website: https://www.even3.com.br/viii-simposio-em-neurociencia-e-cognicao-da-universidade-federal-do-abc-761401/
References — A Second Reading of the Article
1. The brain may possess available connections that contribute to compensatory responses following functional changes.
Lent, R.; Tovar-Moll, F.; Szczupak, D. (2026). The secret connections of the brain: a connectomic reserve for neuroplasticity? Brain, 149(7), 2273–2285.
The researchers propose connectomic reserve as a neurobiological hypothesis, considering exuberant developmental circuits as examples of potential resources for plasticity.
https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awag082
2. Infant regulation also takes place during interactions with caregivers.
BrainLatam (2026). Sincronia Biocomportamental e Alostase: Quando um Corpo Ajuda Outro Corpo a Construir Mundo [Biobehavioral Synchrony and Allostasis: When One Body Helps Another Body Build a World].
The essay discusses how caregiving relationships participate in the bodily and behavioral conditions of development, engaging with a proposal by Victor N. Almeida.
3. Infants aged five to seven months show neural and affective responses associated with social exclusion, without a generalized increase in interbrain synchronization.
Goharbakhsh, N.; Kulke, L. (2026). Can You Feel My Pain? Neural-Behavioural Changes in Caregiver–Infant Dyads During Ostracism. Developmental Science, 29(5), e70269.
This preregistered EEG hyperscanning study included 41 dyads in the behavioral analysis and 34 in the interbrain synchronization analysis. It found higher infant theta power during exclusion compared with the turn-waiting condition, without directly demonstrating a conscious experience of belonging.
https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.70269
4. Teaching may involve preserving and transforming coordination between people rather than simply transmitting information.
Barraza, P.; Parra, I. (2026). The evolution of shared worlds: teaching and the origins of cumulative culture. Frontiers in Education, 11.
This theoretical article proposes understanding teaching as recurring relational coordination capable of contributing to the continuity and transformation of cultural practices.
https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1977228
5. Social and environmental conditions during childhood may participate in allostatic trajectories and development in Latin America.
Migeot, J.; Panesso, C.; Duran-Aniotz, C. et al. (2024). Allostasis, health, and development in Latin America. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 162, 105697.
The review brings together perspectives on physiological adaptation, inequalities, and environmental conditions, proposing an allostatic approach to understanding developmental and health trajectories.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105697
6. School infrastructure, including usable toilets, provides essential material conditions for participation and learning.
WHO/UNICEF (2026). Progress on drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene in schools: 2015–2025.
The report presents global indicators of water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools and estimates that 460 million school-age children lacked access to basic school sanitation services in 2025.
https://data.unicef.org/resources/jmp-wash-in-schools-2026/
7. Architecture participates in opportunities for movement, perception, accessibility, and interaction among different Body-Territories.
Cionek, J. (2026). O espaço também participa do Nós — quando a arquitetura permite Ser [Space Also Participates in Us — When Architecture Allows Us to Be]. BrainLatam.
The article develops an original perspective on relational neuroarchitecture, connecting affordances, environmental conditions, Body-Territory, and Jiwasa.
https://brainlatam.com/blog/o-espaco-tambem-participa-do-nos-quando-a-arquitetura-permite-ser-8778
8. Social experiences accumulated throughout life are associated with indicators of brain health and dementia in Latin America.
Migeot, J.; Pina-Escudero, S. D.; Hernandez, H. et al. (2025). Social exposome and brain health outcomes of dementia across Latin America. Nature Communications, 16, 8196.
The study examined 2,211 participants from six Latin American countries and found associations between adverse social exposures, cognition, functioning, and brain changes. The sample was not representative of the entire region.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63277-6
9. Brain reserve, cognitive reserve, and brain maintenance are distinct concepts that help explain individual differences in aging.
Stern, Y. et al. (2020). Whitepaper: Defining and investigating cognitive reserve, brain reserve, and brain maintenance. Alzheimer's & Dementia, 16(9), 1305–1311.
The paper establishes important conceptual distinctions to avoid treating biological mechanisms, life experiences, and clinical outcomes as equivalent.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jalz.2018.07.219
10. Cooperation may involve patterns of neural coordination that depend on specific experimental conditions.
Leiva-Cisterna, I.; Barraza, P.; Rodríguez, E.; Dumas, G. (2025). Sensory multi-brain stimulation enhances dyadic cooperative behavior. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 20(1), nsaf104.
The study investigates rhythmic sensory stimulation, interbrain coupling, and cooperation, without establishing that greater neural synchronization always represents better collective functioning.
https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaf104
11. Contemporary brain research can broaden its questions by considering the body, environment, relationships, and developmental conditions.
UFABC (2026). 8th Symposium on Neuroscience and Cognition — The Brain in Context: Contemporary Challenges in Interdisciplinary Neuroscience.
The event brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on the brain, cognition, and behavior, creating opportunities for dialogue across scientific methods and research questions.
Scientific and conceptual note: Body-Territory, 5D Consciousness, Jiwasa, Artificial Biome, and Relational Connectomic Reserve are original formulations or conceptual extensions developed by BrainLatam. The connectomic reserve proposed by Lent, Tovar-Moll, and Szczupak is a distinct neurobiological hypothesis. Studies on allostasis, social exclusion, teaching, architecture, and the social exposome support specific research questions but do not demonstrate the existence of a relational connectomic reserve or its formation through particular relationships or environments.
BRAINLATAM · W45/2026 · BLOG 07 · ENGLISH EDITION
