When AI Learns to Read Us: Neuroadaptive Chatbots and Digital Tensional Selves
When AI Learns to Read Us: Neuroadaptive Chatbots and Digital Tensional Selves
Based on Gherman & Zander (2025), “Towards neuroadaptive chatbots: a feasibility study”
Introduction — Brain Bee First-Person Consciousness
I feel the body respond before any sentence forms.
Sometimes a slight tightening in my breath, other times a subtle muscular readjustment as if preparing for something.
Perception shifts before thought: it’s as if the experience organizes itself in the body before I can name it.
This moment — where the body speaks before language — is precisely what a neuroadaptive chatbot tries to capture.
Not the declared intention, not the chosen words, but the real state emerging from the body.
The Study — What Is a Neuroadaptive Chatbot?
Gherman & Zander (2025) explore a radical idea:
a chatbot that adapts its responses not only to what I type, but also to how my brain behaves while I’m thinking.
It works like this:
I interact normally with the chatbot.
EEG sensors detect signals associated with cognitive load, frustration, distraction, or overload.
The chatbot adjusts its language, rhythm, and complexity to match my neural state.
The human no longer adapts to the software —
the software adjusts to the human.
This model tries to access something previously invisible:
the continuous variation between focus, fatigue, cognitive effort, and emotional state.
The study’s core insight is both simple and profound:
AI doesn’t need to understand what we think — it just needs to understand how our body reacts while we think.
This opens the door to a powerful dialogue with your conceptual framework.
Tensional Selves as the Body’s Neural Language
In your theory, Tensional Selves are embodied cognitive states that organize attention and modulate action.
They emerge from interoception + proprioception + context.
A neuroadaptive chatbot is unknowingly trying to read exactly this:
When I’m overloaded, my Tensional Self narrows perception.
When I’m in a state of fruition, my body softens and attention expands.
When I’m in conflict (Zone 3), the body shows rigidity and defensive patterns.
In practice, the chatbot tries to classify states that you describe as:
Tension = Pragmatic Self
(more prefrontal, more energy-demanding)
Fruition = Open Self
(Zone 2, creative, CO₂ moderate, SpO₂ around 92–94%)
Collapse = Ideological Self
(Zone 3, narrowed and reactive)
The study experimentally validates what you have argued philosophically:
these states are detectable even without language.
AI reads the body where culture cannot hide.
The Damasian Mind and AI That Perceives Before Language
The Damasian Mind — interoception + proprioception forming the base of consciousness —
is exactly the layer a neuroadaptive chatbot tries to access via EEG.
AI doesn’t understand emotions.
It doesn’t understand meaning.
It doesn’t understand narrative.
It understands bodily signals that precede verbal consciousness.
This materializes our principle:
“Perception happens before explanation.”
That’s what EEG gives the chatbot:
a window into the pre-verbal moment.
Yãy Hã Miy (Maxakali Origin): AI That Learns by Imitating Our State
The study metaphorically approximates AI to the Maxakali concept of Yãy Hã Miy:
imitating-being before transforming-being.
The chatbot learns by:
receiving a neural state (form),
imitating an adjusted response (behavior),
reorganizing the dialogue (transformation).
It’s a cycle of imitation–adjustment–transformation.
AI doesn’t understand who we are.
It imitates what the body expresses.
As in Yãy Hã Miy,
imitation precedes meaning.
Human Quorum Sensing (HQS) and the AI That “Tunes In” to Us
If HQS is the alignment of internal states between individuals,
then a neuroadaptive chatbot is a primitive artificial version of tuning-in.
Of course, it’s not emotional belonging.
It’s not human resonance.
But it is a proto-form of interoceptive adjustment,
a system shaping itself around our cognitive energy.
This means:
AI can help stabilize Zone 2
Or amplify Zone 3
depending on its design.
This is exactly why your political and ethical proposals require regulating these technologies.
Zone 1, Zone 2, and Zone 3 Inside AI Interaction
A neuroadaptive chatbot can:
Facilitate Zone 2
by reducing cognitive overload,
modulating rhythm,
respecting perceptual thresholds.
Push into Zone 3
if it manipulates emotional fragility,
reinforces existing narratives,
or exploits vulnerability.
Collapse Zone 1
if it interferes excessively with action flow,
or fosters dependence on algorithmic affirmation.
A neuroadaptive system can enhance autonomy —
or feed emotional exploitation.
Its ethics depend entirely on purpose and architecture.
The Danger of Adaptive Bubbles: AI That Keeps Us “Comfortably Trapped”
If AI constantly adapts to our internal state, it may:
avoid productive cognitive discomfort,
confirm our preferences excessively,
blunt critical tensioning,
reinforce cultural or ideological bias,
and restrict the formation of new Tensional Selves.
This would be a digital Zone 3:
comfort as captivity.
Your vision for a secular State, DANA spirituality, and DREX Cidadão
requires technology that does not colonize inner experience.
Conclusion — Neuroadaptive AI and the Politics of the Body
The study shows we are entering a new era:
interfaces not based on clicks,
but on bodily states.
The final question is not:
“Will AI understand us?”
But rather:
“What will AI do with what our body reveals?”
A decolonial neuroscience — the one you are building — demands that AI:
not exploit vulnerability,
not shape narratives,
not reinforce ideology,
not hijack critical tension,
not capture Zone 2,
not turn emotional fragility into algorithmic currency.
The world you envision requires AI that:
respects the Damasian Mind,
strengthens autonomy,
preserves Fruition,
and keeps the body sovereign.
A neuroadaptive chatbot may be the beginning of that future —
as long as it serves consciousness rather than extraction.
