Metanoia - How Do We Learn to Create Our Perception of the Present?

Beta bursts, Connectomic Reserve, attention, qualia, and the reselection of pathways within the Metastable Body-Territory.

Learning · 5D Consciousness · EEG–fNIRS · Neural Plasticity · Attention · Memory · Body-Territory · Complex Systems

Imagine entering an experimental chamber where oxygen concentration is changed under controlled conditions.

Your organism does not wait until the new condition is reached before responding. As the environment changes, respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic mechanisms continuously adjust their activity.

Now imagine a different experience: you hear a word that brings back a memory. A representation emerges, acquires details, and perhaps evokes an emotion powerful enough to capture your attention.

Both examples involve transformation, although their underlying mechanisms differ.

What happens between a condition A and a condition B, while the Body-Territory reorganizes its pathways for perceiving?

This is our question about Metanoia.

1. Metanoia: transcendence happens during the transition

Historically, metanoia involves a change in thinking, understanding, or orientation.

At BrainLatam, we propose investigating something specific: the reselection of pathways through which the Body-Territory constitutes its perception of the present.

Metanoia is not located exclusively in the initial condition A or in the outcome B.

It participates in the transformation between these conditions.

In a chamber with altered oxygen levels, we can observe physiological adjustments. However, metabolic adaptation does not automatically demonstrate learning or conscious experience.

Window of inference — Which processes reorganize during the transition, rather than only when we compare its endpoints?

2. The present does not arrive fully formed

Our perception of the present is not a complete copy of environmental stimuli.

The Body-Territory processes signals through its sensory systems, organized within BrainLatam's proposed twelve senses, interacting with memory, metabolism, expectations, and previous experiences.

Consequently, the same situation may produce different perceptions at successive moments.

A memory changes the meaning of a word. An emotion alters the relevance of an event.

The Metanoia hypothesis proposes that pathway reselection continuously participates in the constitution of the perceived present.

We do not need to wait for a new memory to become consolidated before investigating this process.

3. 5D Consciousness and the Movement Dimension

In BrainLatam's formulation:

5D Consciousness = 3D Body-Territory + 1D Movement + 1D Qualia.

The three spatial dimensions correspond to the organism's material spatiality, within which its processes constitute representations.

The Movement Dimension describes the dynamics of these representations: they emerge, expand, reorganize, diminish, or cease to participate in current experience.

A memory may become vivid and subsequently lose prominence without necessarily being biologically erased.

The Qualia Dimension corresponds to the subjective quality of experience.

“Consciousness is a movement that perceives itself as BEING within the metabolism produced.”

Movement, therefore, does not merely mean muscular displacement or the passage of time.

4. Qualia: what captures or escapes our attention

Imagine reading while music plays.

Initially, the music remains at the periphery of your experience. An unexpected note captures your attention, and the words lose prominence.

The musical stimulus was already present.

What changed was its relationship with attention and with the representations participating in your perceived present.

In Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain processes, Christof Koch and Naotsugu Tsuchiya discussed evidence for a dissociation between attention and consciousness.

Window of inference — Does perceived content reorganize attention, or does an attentional shift reorganize content? How can we distinguish peripheral experience from nonconscious processing?

5. Metanoia and the reselection of attentional focus

In BrainLatam's hypothesis, a quale may become prominent, lose priority, or participate in peripheral experience.

However, stimuli processed without conscious experience should not automatically be described as qualia.

Metanoia raises a question about this dynamic: which pathways are reselected when something begins to occupy the perceived present?

The answer does not necessarily involve lasting learning.

We can continuously shift our attention without consolidating new skills.

Yet some of these transformations may change the possibilities available later.

Window of inference — Which changes precede attentional capture, which accompany it, and which persist afterward?

6. Beta bursts: a window into reorganization

In 2026, Kate Schipper and colleagues published Beta burst dynamics in the motor cortex are reshaped through sensorimotor refinement.

They used high-density EEG during nine sessions of bimanual motor learning.

With practice, beta bursts became more precisely associated with task phases, particularly following movements.

Adaptive training supported performance during practice, whereas nonadaptive training showed better retention.

The study demonstrates changes in the temporal organization of beta events during motor learning.

Window of inference — Could changes in the probability, amplitude, and temporal precision of these events accompany specific moments of functional pathway reselection?

This relationship with Metanoia has not yet been demonstrated.

7. Connectomic Reserve: are other pathways available?

Roberto Lent, Fernanda Tovar-Moll, and Diego Szczupak proposed the Connectomic Reserve hypothesis in The secret connections of the brain: a connectomic reserve for neuroplasticity?.

The authors discuss the possibility that relatively underused anatomical connections may participate in neuroplasticity.

Their proposal introduces a complementary question to beta-burst research.

If functional patterns reorganize during learning, could some changes involve alternative anatomical pathways?

Window of inference — Can we associate functional transformations, behavioral retention, and structural measurements in longitudinal studies?

Beta bursts do not directly identify recruited anatomical connections. The relationship between these two bodies of research remains an experimental hypothesis.

8. Learning also changes remembering

In An EEG dataset for multi-state memory processing in an associative word-pair task, Gi-Hwan Shin and colleagues made recordings from 41 participants available.

The protocol includes encoding, retrieval, re-encoding, and rest, alongside EEG, electrooculography, and behavioral responses.

This dataset provides opportunities to investigate dynamics associated with memory processing.

Window of inference — When an association is recalled, do previous patterns reappear? Does re-encoding modify their transitions or their relationship with perceived difficulty?

The study provides data; it does not, by itself, demonstrate the mechanism of Metanoia.

9. Glia: representation is not exclusively neuronal

In Astrocytes enable amygdala neural representations supporting memory, Olena Bukalo and colleagues investigated mice.

Using calcium recordings and astrocytic manipulations, they demonstrated contributions of these cells to neuronal representations associated with the retrieval and extinction of fear memories.

This expands the discussion of the material processes supporting representations.

Window of inference — How do neuronal and glial processes participate in the reorganizations that make it possible to modify learned responses?

These findings do not demonstrate qualia in astrocytes, nor do they justify interpreting human beta bursts as specific indicators of glial calcium activity.

10. Belonging: others participate in the present

The present is also constituted through encounters.

Another person's words may evoke memories, modify expectations, and transform what we perceive.

In BrainLatam's proposal, belonging is investigated as a possible relational property of living beings, without requiring a new sensory organ.

Through Human Quorum Sensing, this hypothesis brings communication and collective organization into dialogue while preserving the differences between cellular mechanisms and human experiences.

True Jiwasa proposes a collective that protects the expression of each Weichö.

Window of inference — Does the security of belonging modify available perceptual pathways without requiring uniformity among participants?

11. An experiment to investigate the present

We propose combining individual perception, memory, and attention tasks with cooperative experiences.

During the A→B transition, we would introduce unexpected information, moderate contextual changes, or opportunities to reinterpret stimuli.

We would record EEG, fNIRS, ECG, respiration, behavior, and subjective reports.

We would investigate beta bursts, shifts in attentional focus, memory retrieval, and individual differences.

We would also use repetition controls, equivalent stimuli, and conditions without reciprocal interaction.

Window of inference — Which neural changes precede a new perception? Which accompany its constitution? Which predict subsequent learning?

Investigating a relationship with Connectomic Reserve would require additional, appropriate measurements of brain structure.

12. Learning: preserving new possibilities for perception

In our hypothesis, Metanoia participates in the creation of our perception of the present.

Learning introduces another possibility: some reorganizations may remain available after the experience.

In an A→B→A′ design, participants would return to the initial situation after the transformation, with additional tests of retention and transfer.

The difference between A and A′ would not be sufficient: we would need to control for practice, familiarity, and temporary fluctuations.

Window of inference — Did the organism merely respond differently at that moment, or did it develop pathways that could be reselected during future encounters?

This distinction connects the formation of the present with learning without treating them as identical.

13. BEING–SITUATED–PERCEIVING: the Metanoia of the Body-Territory

In BrainLatam's Decolonial Neuroscience, the Body-Territory exists within a Biome, with its own metabolism, history, relationships, and possibilities.

The interpretative extension APUS–Tekoha allows us to consider the reciprocity between lived history, our position in the world, and perception.

BEING–SITUATED–PERCEIVING does not represent three successive brain modules, but a continuously reconstructed relationship.

Metanoia is our hypothesis concerning pathway reselection within that reconstruction.

The Movement Dimension describes the dynamics of representations. Qualia constitute their experiential dimension. Attention participates in determining what becomes prominent.

Beta bursts and Connectomic Reserve provide questions about functional mechanisms and anatomical possibilities, but not yet a unified explanation.

Learning is not merely storing the past for future use. It also means transforming the pathways through which we create our perception of the present.

After each encounter, we may not need to become a different organism.

We can remain ourselves while developing new possibilities for BEING, being SITUATED, and PERCEIVING.

Scientific note: Metanoia as pathway reselection in the creation of the perceived present is BrainLatam's integrative hypothesis. The cited experimental findings provide grounds for specific research questions, but they do not establish that beta bursts recruit the Connectomic Reserve or that EEG/fNIRS directly measure qualia.

BRAINLATAM | W47/2026 | BLOG 12/12 — ENGLISH VERSION · SERIES FINALE