EEG, Sleep, and the Menstrual Cycle: Elasticity Before Performance
EEG, Sleep, and the Menstrual Cycle: Elasticity Before Performance
Maybe we need to begin with a simple sentence: no body performs the same way every day.
School, sports, music, work, and digital life often treat the body as a linear machine: sleep, wake up, study, produce, compete, respond. But living bodies are rhythmic. We breathe in cycles. We sleep in cycles. We learn in cycles. We menstruate in cycles. We dream in cycles.
In the BrainLatam2026 language, this is not weakness. It is elasticity: the ability to adjust performance to the real body, instead of forcing the body to obey an artificial calendar of productivity.
In Latin American decolonial readings, especially in the concepts of cuerpo-territorio and agua-cuerpo-territorio, body, water, and territory are not separate realities. Sofia Zaragocin proposes the bilingual concept agua-cuerpo-territorio / water-body-territory, bringing body-territory and water-territory together through decolonial feminist debates in the Americas. The water of the river is not separate from the water of the body. Sweat, tears, blood, amniotic fluid, and the ocean belong to the same continuity of life.
The body that menstruates is not “failing”: it is showing tide. The body that dreams is not “turned off”: it is reorganizing internal waters. The body that goes through puberty, PMS/PMDD, pregnancy, postpartum, or menopause is not “unstable”: it is changing the course of the river.
Sleep is also a Movement of Waters. It is not a single block. It alternates between NREM and REM. NREM is divided into N1, N2, and N3. In a typical night, the body moves through cycles of around 90 to 110 minutes, repeating these stages several times. N1 is the entrance into sleep, the riverbank. N2 is a more stable sleep, with sleep spindles and K-complexes in the EEG. N3 is deep slow-wave sleep, the deep water, when the brain intensifies cleaning, drainage, and reorganization through the glymphatic system. REM also has layers, such as tonic REM and phasic REM, suggesting that even dream sleep has different forms of opening and closing to territory.
So it is not enough to ask: “Did you sleep well?” The BrainLatam2026 question is: did the body enter N1? Did it remain in N2? Did it deepen into N3? Did the brain wash its internal waters? Did it cross tonic REM and phasic REM? Did pain, shame, screen exposure, heat, anxiety, the menstrual cycle, or exhaustion alter this crossing?
For a long time, common sense associated dreaming mainly with REM. Today, recent EEG studies show a more complex story: dream experiences can also be investigated in NREM, including N2, and EEG features can predict reports of conscious experience in both REM and NREM. This is central: dreaming is not only the strong imagery of REM; it can be the reorganization of the Movement of Waters at different depths of sleep.
The menstrual cycle must also be treated carefully. It should not be used to reduce anyone, nor to support biologically poor ideas about female instability. The point is different: the body changes, and education must learn to listen to these changes. A 2024 article cited in the review showed that cycle phases and hormonal fluctuations modulate brain network dynamics in healthy women, including networks related to attention, control, salience, somatomotor processing, and subcortical regions.
In adolescence, this becomes even more delicate. Menarche is not only a biological event. It reorganizes sleep, belonging, shame, self-care, body-territory, and the way of being at school. PMS/PMDD should not be a joke or an excuse for humiliation. It may involve pain, irritability, fatigue, sleep changes, difficulty focusing, and emotional sensitivity. On some days, the best performance may be a test, training, stage, or long class. On other days, it may be reviewing, breathing, reducing load, sleeping better, and avoiding unnecessary exposure. This is elasticity.
Pregnancy and postpartum expand this Movement of Waters even further. Postpartum depression should not be seen as weakness, lack of love, or maternal incapacity. It can be understood as a state in which sleep, hormones, pain, exhaustion, breastfeeding, loneliness, social pressure, and absence of Jiwasa enter deep misalignment. Postpartum is a major body-territory crossing: the body leaves pregnancy, crosses birth, sleep loss, new identity, continuous care, and the reorganization of APUS with the baby.
The World Health Organization estimates that about 13% of women who have recently given birth experience a mental disorder, mainly depression; in developing countries, this may reach 19.8% after childbirth. ACOG recommends screening for depression and anxiety at the initial prenatal visit, later in pregnancy, and during postpartum visits.
A simple self-check, without diagnosis, may ask: have I been able to feel any pleasure during the day? Can I sleep when there is a real opportunity? Do I feel intense guilt or a constant sense of failure? Do I experience excessive fear, irritability, or frequent crying? Can I ask for help without shame? Do I feel I have Jiwasa, or am I maternally and bodily alone?
Screening tools such as the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) are used for screening, not diagnosis, and evaluate the experience of the last seven days. When suffering is persistent, the path is not to “just endure it”: it is to seek a health team, psychologist, physician, public health service, and support network.
This inclusion matters because postpartum depression shows very clearly that performance, care, and mental health do not depend only on willpower. They depend on sleep, territory, bonding, network, nutrition, time, safety, and belonging. No body crosses pregnancy, birth, interrupted sleep, and intense care without needing Jiwasa.
Menopause also needs to leave silence. It is not the end of intelligence, creation, or performance. It is a bodily crossing. Recent studies discuss possible changes in processing speed, attention, and working memory during perimenopause, but the BrainLatam2026 reading avoids turning this into stigma: in the image of the Movement of Waters, menopause does not dry the river; it changes its course. The body asks for another listening, another rhythm, another pedagogy of performance.
The scientific question for Brain Bee is: how do the menstrual cycle, sleep, dreaming, pregnancy, postpartum, and hormonal transitions modulate EEG, executive functions, and performance?
A BrainLatam2026 study could follow adolescents and adults across different phases of the cycle, with consent, privacy, and no intimate exposure. We could measure sleep EEG, EEG during attention tasks, ECG/HRV, respiration, GSR, actigraphy, body temperature, sleep quality, pain, perceived energy, working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and sense of belonging. In postpartum, we could include ethical screening with EPDS, sleep quality, perceived support network, caregiving load, bonding, exhaustion, domestic APUS, and perception of Jiwasa.
The hypothesis would be: when we respect N1, N2, N3, tonic REM, phasic REM, the Movement of Waters, and body-territory, performance stops being linear demand and becomes intelligent elasticity.
Elasticity before performance. Before demanding focus, ask about sleep. Before demanding results, ask about the body. Before calling it instability, ask about the cycle. Before demanding constancy, ask about the Movement of Waters. Before judging a mother, ask about postpartum, support, sleep, and Jiwasa.
High performance does not begin with effort. It begins with the body’s ability to cross N1, N2, N3, tonic REM, and phasic REM without being hijacked by pain, stress, shame, heat, screens, loneliness, or linear pressure.
The body that menstruates, matures, gestates, gives birth, dreams, and crosses menopause is not a lesser body. It is a river-body. It is liquid APUS. It is the Damasian Mind in tide. It is the Movement of Waters trying to keep life, memory, dream, and performance within the same territory.
References
Patel, A. K. et al. Physiology, Sleep Stages. StatPearls / NCBI Bookshelf, 2024.
Feriante, J. et al. Physiology, REM Sleep. StatPearls / NCBI Bookshelf, 2023.
Targeting Sleep Physiology to Modulate Glymphatic Brain Clearance. Physiology, 2024.
Corbali, O. et al. Glymphatic System in Neurological Disorders and Neurodegenerative Diseases. Frontiers in Neurology, 2025.
Zaragocin, S. Agua-cuerpo-territorio / Water-body-territory. Political Geography, 2024.
D’Arcangelis, C. L.; Quiroga, L. Cuerpo-Territorio: Towards Feminist Solidarities in the Americas. Revista Eletrônica da ANPHLAC, 2023.
Moctezuma, L. A. et al. From High- to Low-Density EEG for Automatic Classification of Dream Experiences During Stage 2 of NREM. Sleep Advances, 2025.
Wong, W. et al. A Dream EEG and Mentation Database. Nature Communications, 2025.
Avila-Varela, D. S. et al. Whole-Brain Dynamics Across the Menstrual Cycle. npj Women’s Health, 2024.
Beníčková, M. et al. Effect of Circadian Rhythm and Menstrual Cycle on Physical Performance in Women. Frontiers in Physiology, 2024.
WHO. Perinatal Mental Health.
ACOG. Patient Screening / Perinatal Mental Health.
Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), postpartum symptom screening.
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