Before Language: Fruição and Belonging in the Pre-Linguistic Brain

First-Person Consciousness Brain Bee Ideas

Before words, there is life.
Before speech, there is awareness.
Human experience does not begin in language — it begins in rhythm, in the pulse that moves blood, breath, and the cerebral oxygenation of the newborn.

In my concepts, what we call mind is a continuous flow between interoception (feeling the body from within) and proprioception (feeling the body in space).
I call this the Damasian Mind — a living instance of embodied consciousness, where thinking and sensing are not yet divided.
In this early life state, cognition emerges as movement and energetic exchange, not as thought.

Neonatal physiology reveals that even before the first sound, the brain is already organizing the world — hemodynamically, respiratorily, and affectively.
It is here that Decolonial Neuroscience meets biology: consciousness is first metabolic, then symbolic.

Zone 2: The Homeostasis of Fruição

In my concepts, Zone 2 is the territory of physiological Fruição — the point where body and mind reach metabolic balance, allowing thought to flow effortlessly.
In newborns, this state is spontaneous. The infant oscillates naturally between activation and rest, self-regulating cerebral oxygen consumption according to respiratory rhythm.

Research by Epain et al. (2025) on emotional and physiological responses to music shows that low frequencies amplify coherence between auditory and autonomic systems.
Although studied in adults, the principle mirrors the neonatal state: the body-sound resonance that sustains Zone 2 is already alive in the cradle.

At Artinis Medical Systems, neonatal fNIRS studies confirm the same principle: attention and rest are hemodynamic states, not cognitive achievements.
In Developing Customized NIRS-EEG for Infant Sleep Research, researchers demonstrated that during sleep, infants alternate predictable cycles of cerebral perfusion and electrical activity — as if breathing thought itself.
Another study, Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Neonatal Sleep Classification, showed distinct oxygenation signatures for active and quiet sleep, revealing that pre-linguistic consciousness is a physiological rhythm of Fruição.

 Interoception: The First Language

Interoception — the perception of the body from within — is the first language of being.
The newborn learns to exist by modulating sensations of heat, pressure, heartbeat, and breath long before recognizing sound or face.

The study Respiratory Rate Extraction from Neonatal NIRS Signals demonstrated that respiratory frequency can be extracted directly from fNIRS data, exposing a tight coupling between breathing and cerebral oxygenation from the earliest days of life.
This coupling shows that interoception functions as an internal measurement system — the body sensing itself to maintain conscious stability.
It is the physiological expression of the Damasian Mind, where sensing and knowing have not yet been separated.

Skin That Thinks: The Body as Territory of Belonging

Touch is the first form of empathy.
The infant does not think about the other — it feels the other.
The skin is the first political and spiritual territory.

The study Cerebral Hemodynamic Response to a Therapeutic Bed for Procedural Pain Management in Preterm Infants (Calmer) showed that simple tactile contact — a bed simulating maternal warmth and skin texture — significantly reduces pain responses and reorganizes cerebral blood flow in preterm infants.
This demonstrates that physical belonging is a natural technology of regulation, preceding language and cognition.

In my framework, this phenomenon expresses Human Quorum Sensing (QSH): the biological capacity to regulate one’s physiological state through the density of another’s presence.
Just as bacteria alter behavior based on the chemical density of their surroundings, humans modulate consciousness through proximity and shared emotion.
For the newborn, warmth and touch maintain collective Zone 2, preventing the energetic collapse of physiological solitude.

Metabolism as Consciousness

Every subjective experience has a metabolic correlate.
Consciousness is the rhythmic coordination of energy, blood, and breath.
Even before birth, the fetal brain displays measurable fluctuations in oxygenation.

The study Fetal Oxygenation Measurement Using Wireless NIRS demonstrated that the fetal brain regulates its perfusion in synchrony with maternal respiration.
This self-regulation is the primordial form of what will later become attention.
It is the embryo of Fruição — the ability to be present without effort, sustained by a dynamic equilibrium between surrender and metabolism.
The fetus, before language, already practices what adults attempt to recover through meditation: lucid rest within the flow of life.

Tensional Selves and the Birth of Thought

At the beginning of life, every stimulus — sound, light, touch — produces a bodily tension that reorganizes the system.
I call these micro-states Tensional Selves: transient configurations of being that later become emotions, beliefs, and action patterns.

The study Changes in Cerebral Oxygenation During Cranial Ultrasound in Preterm Infants shows that even a neutral stimulus, such as gentle contact from an ultrasound probe on the fontanelle, alters cortical oxygenation.
The body, therefore, thinks through what touches it.

Each tension is a metabolic learning moment.
The pre-linguistic infant accumulates experiences of coherence and rupture that sculpt the future topology of consciousness.
This learning is rhythmic, not conceptual — the birth of interoceptive memory, the remembrance of what felt good because it kept the body in flow.

Relational Plasticity and Co-Regulation

Recent EEG–fNIRS hyperscanning studies by NIRx in adolescents and adults show that brains engaged in cooperative interaction exhibit inter-hemodynamic coherence — synchronized blood flow and neural oscillations.
The same principle applies to the mother-infant dyad.
Co-regulation is the first exercise of Relational Plasticity, in which the nervous system learns to reshape itself through the presence of another.

This is the physiological root of empathy:
thinking with the other before thinking about the other.
In pre-linguistic life, this process is total — the infant is empathy, unbounded by cognitive separation.

A Decolonial Neuroscience of Early Life

Western science has long described the newborn as incomplete — passive, “in development.”
Decolonial Neuroscience proposes another view: the infant is already complete in its mode of consciousness.
Its mind is pre-semantic but post-biological — a vibrant field of chemical, electrical, and affective exchange.

While colonial epistemologies split reason from body, the newborn embodies the lost unity.
It lives in continuous Zone 2, where there is no difference between existing and enjoying — between metabolism and meaning.
It is this state that societies should preserve, not domesticate.

Conclusion

Before speech, there is belonging.
Before language, there is rhythm.
Before culture, there is life in Zone 2 — the silent balance between flowing blood and entering air.

Artinis’ neonatal research reveals that the brain is born already sensing its own flow and responding to care.
These studies confirm, with empirical clarity, that consciousness is not a product of language — it precedes it.

Fruição, the Damasian Mind, Human Quorum Sensing, and Tensional Selves are not metaphors.
They are bioethical descriptions of existence — life learning to stabilize itself before learning to speak.

The task of modern neuroscience is to reconnect with this physiological wisdom:
to remember that every thought begins as breath,
and every word was once oxygenated silence.

References – Artinis Medical Systems & Related Publications (2024–2025)

• Developing Customized NIRS-EEG for Infant Sleep Research.
  
  

• Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Neonatal Sleep Classification.
  
  

• Respiratory Rate Extraction from Neonatal NIRS Signals.
  
  

• Cerebral Hemodynamic Response to a Therapeutic Bed for Procedural Pain Management in Preterm Infants (Calmer).
  
  

• Fetal Oxygenation Measurement Using Wireless NIRS.
  
  

• Changes in Cerebral Oxygenation During Cranial Ultrasound in Preterm Infants.
  
  

• Epain et al. (2025). Bass Amplification Impacts Emotional, Neural and Physiological Responses to Music.
  
  

• Gehrke et al. (2025). Neuroadaptive Haptics for Adaptive XR Systems.