What Does Not Enter Attention May Also Limit the Future We Are Able to Imagine

There is an old intuition in journalism: a major story needs room to breathe.

The idea that a newsroom should avoid wasting two major “scoops” in the same news cycle is not a scientific law. It is an editorial heuristic built around something deeply human:

our attention cannot transform everything into the main event at the same time.

The digital environment, however, has created an almost inverted situation.

What if the strategy is not to make one important piece of information remain?

What if it is to prevent any other information from remaining long enough?

An accusation appears.

Before it can be verified, another one emerges.

An event begins to be explained while it is still happening.

Something that will happen tomorrow is already given a narrative today about its causes, culprits, and consequences.

A correction arrives after attention has already moved toward three new subjects.

Perhaps, then, the democratic question is not only:

“Which information did we believe?”

We may also need to ask:

“Which representations remained sufficiently available to participate in what we were able to feel, perceive, Plan, and Choose?”

This is where research on attention meets our hypothesis of 5D Consciousness, and later, Religare.

The Same Story Does Not Encounter the Same Attentional State

The main scientific reference for this reflection is the excellent work of Monica A. Boudewyn, Molly A. Erickson, Kurt Winsler, Deanna M. Barch, Michael J. Frank, James M. Gold, Steven J. Luck, Angus W. MacDonald III, John D. Ragland, Steven M. Silverstein, Andrew Yonelinas, and Cameron S. Carter.

In Distinct Attentional Control Profiles during Language Comprehension in Major Mental Health Disorders, published in 2026, the researchers combined behavioral measures and EEG during the comprehension of spoken narratives.

Participants were periodically interrupted and asked to report whether they were fully attending to the narrative, partly distracted, or completely off task.

These subjective categories were not merely different verbal descriptions.

EEG revealed distinguishable neurophysiological signatures, including modulations of periodic alpha power according to attentional state.

The initiative by Boudewyn and colleagues deserves particular recognition because it challenges a common simplification:

receiving information does not mean processing it in the same way.

Two people may hear exactly the same story.

And even the same person, at different moments, may encounter that story from very different attentional states.

For our discussion, this is fundamental.

But 5D Consciousness proposes moving one step further.

The Body Was in Pain Before There Was an “I Am in Pain”

Let us return to pain.

We can say:

“I realized that I am in pain.”

In everyday language, it seems as though an “I” exists first and then discovers pain located somewhere in its body.

In BrainLatam’s 5D Consciousness hypothesis, we try to reverse this perspective.

The body that was hurting was already happening before the experience:

“I am in pain.”

There was electrical activity.

Metabolism.

Ionic gradients.

Blood flow.

Tension.

Interoceptive signals.

Movement.

Autonomic changes.

Memories and expectations associated with that condition.

And at a particular moment, part of this movement begins to be perceived as:

“I, who am in pain.”

This is why we have been working with the formulation:

consciousness is the movement that perceives itself as being within the metabolism that produced it.

This is a BrainLatam conceptual hypothesis, not a consensual definition within neuroscience.

The important point for this blog is different:

perception does not begin from zero.

When something finally becomes a first-person experience, it encounters an organism in which different representations may already be activated or pre-activated.

Perceiving Depends on What Was Already Available

Within 5D Consciousness, we propose that perception of an event depends on a dynamic configuration that includes, among other conditions:

the predominant functional connectome;

the available sensory systems;

activated and pre-activated memories;

the level of attention;

the stimulus itself;

and the material state of the Body-Territory at that moment.

“Pre-activated,” here, does not necessarily mean a representation consciously held in the foreground.

Contemporary neuroscience already allows for relevant contents to remain in latent or low-activity states and to be recruited again when they become relevant. Working-memory models distinguish what is currently inside the attentional focus from representations that may temporarily remain less accessible and later be reactivated.

This distinction matters because it prevents confusion.

Classic working-memory research frequently finds a very limited capacity for items simultaneously maintained in conscious focus — often around three or four units in several paradigms.

When BrainLatam works experimentally with the hypothesis of something near 15 pre-activated representational spaces, we are not claiming that humans possess 15 conscious working-memory “slots.”

Our hypothesis is different.

We are proposing a broader dynamic repertoire of pre-available representations, some closer to the focus of attention and others more latent, whose priorities continuously change.

The value “approximately 15” must currently be understood as an operational hypothesis to be tested, rather than as an established capacity.

The scientific questions would be:

How many representations can remain sufficiently pre-activated to interfere with, facilitate, or participate in the next act of perception?

And perhaps more importantly:

How is that set replaced?

Perhaps the Problem Is Not Putting a Lie Inside Someone’s Head

Now let us return to social networks.

Imagine that our Body-Territory maintains a limited and dynamic set of representations sufficiently available to participate rapidly in the next perception.

They might include:

“threat”;

“corruption”;

“my child”;

“employment”;

“taxes”;

“crime”;

“religion”;

“family”;

“security”;

“they want to take something away from me.”

For the moment, it does not matter whether each phrase is consciously being thought.

They may exist at different levels of priority.

Then repetitive stimuli begin to appear, producing confirmation of the same feeling.

They do not need to be fifteen copies of the same message.

They may be fifteen apparently different events:

a video;

a headline;

a meme;

a politician’s statement;

a message in a group;

a clipped interview;

an indignant reaction;

an influencer;

a news story about the reaction;

a comment from someone we know.

All reinforcing the same axis:

threat.

Or:

they are against us.

Research on the illusory truth effect shows that repetition can increase perceived truthfulness, including for misinformation. Recent reviews show that this effect can sometimes occur even when claims conflict with prior knowledge, and experimental work has also linked repetition to a greater willingness to share information.

A 2026 meta-analysis bringing together 182 studies, 366 effect sizes, and 31,184 participants found a small but robust effect of repetition on truth judgments.

But the 5D Consciousness hypothesis does not need to depend only on:

“I repeated it → the person believed it.”

We propose another possibility:

I repeated it → I helped certain representations remain preferentially available.

That mechanism still needs to be experimentally tested.

But it radically changes the question.

What If Repetition Is Also Occupation of Representational Space?

Within our operational hypothesis, suppose a Body-Territory can maintain approximately X representations as sufficiently pre-activated — at present, we experimentally work with an order of magnitude around 15.

These representations would not be permanent.

The system would continuously replace those that are less recruited, less reinforced, or less relevant with more recent or more salient experiences.

Now imagine an informational flow repeatedly generating the same affective direction.

If many different stimuli continuously activate:

fear → threat → enemy → loss → defense,

an important part of the pre-activated repertoire may begin to point toward the same horizon.

We do not need to imagine fifteen spaces being mechanically “filled.”

We are thinking about a change in the distribution of priority.

Other representations still exist.

But they may become less accessible at the precise moment when they are needed to reinterpret an event.

What may remain highly available is:

“they threaten my family.”

And what may become less available is:

“what is the source?”

“is there another explanation?”

“has this happened before?”

“who benefits if I believe this?”

“how does the person I am calling an enemy actually live?”

“what evidence would change my opinion?”

This is where attention stops being merely attention.

It begins to affect the material available for metacognition.

Rock: When Speed Is Necessary — and When It Becomes a Prison

In BrainLatam’s operational metaphor of Rock–Paper–Scissors, we call Rock a faster, more automatic, sensorimotor, habitual, and efficient functional mode.

Rock is not bad.

We need it.

When a car is approaching us, we do not want to write an essay before moving out of the road.

When an athlete executes a highly trained skill, speed is competence.

When we speak our native language, we do not consciously analyze every phoneme.

The problem emerges when a complex environment keeps the Body-Territory continuously configured in a mode where previously available responses seem sufficient for every new event.

If successive stimuli repeatedly confirm what we already feel, a new event may encounter a Rock connectome with answers already prepared:

“I knew it.”

“It is always like this.”

“They are all the same.”

“This confirms everything.”

At that point, intelligence may not be what is missing.

What may be missing is representational availability for changing functional mode.

Paper and Scissors Need Alternatives to Be Available

In BrainLatam’s current metaphor:

Rock represents speed, habit, and execution;

Scissors represents cutting, analysis, comparison, and deliberate planning;

Paper represents fruition + metacognition: broadening attention, returning to the body, and creating the possibility of reorganizing experience.

But for Scissors to compare, more than one possibility needs to be available.

For Paper to critically perceive its own state, there must be enough space for the Body-Territory to encounter:

“I am afraid.”

rather than only:

“They are dangerous.”

The difference appears small.

It is enormous.

The first sentence allows the Body-Territory to perceive its own feeling.

In the second, the feeling has already acquired an apparently obvious external cause.

“I am afraid” creates room for metacognition.

“They are the threat” may prematurely close the process.

It is within this interval that what we call shared agency may become possible.

Not “They Manipulate” and “We Are Manipulated”

Shared agency requires us to abandon two equally comfortable positions.

The first:

“the other person is irrational and was manipulated.”

The second:

“my opinion arose exclusively from me.”

Neither the individual, platform, politician, newspaper, nor algorithm possesses the entire agency of the event.

There are relationships.

Platforms select.

Groups share.

Influencers frame.

Journalists respond.

Algorithms prioritize signals.

Bodies feel.

Memories confirm.

People refuse, reinterpret, share, or change their minds.

Brazilian anthropologist Letícia Cesarino has described far-right publics in Brazil through an ecological and cybernetic perspective in which platforms, actors, publics, and circulating images form feedback loops. Her 2026 work shows how Bolsonarist spaces on Telegram can function as articulations between more opaque layers of the internet and mainstream publics, including the press.

This helps us interpret apparent synchronization between the far right and mainstream media without automatically assuming coordination.

A narrative may emerge in a group.

Gain circulation.

Produce a reaction.

The reaction becomes news.

The news returns to the group as evidence of relevance.

The cycle feeds itself.

The Far Right as a Case, Not as an Exclusive Human Essence

Brazilian research provides specific evidence of misinformation ecosystems associated with the far right.

Raquel Recuero, Felipe Bonow Soares, and colleagues found that, in their dataset on COVID-19 misinformation on Brazilian Facebook, misinformation circulated particularly within pages and groups aligned with the far right, as well as in religious, conspiratorial, and hyperpartisan spaces.

Anna Bentes, studying Bolsonarist Telegram groups during the second round of Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, identified 24 themes among highly engaged content; electoral fraud was the most frequent narrative among those materials.

This does not mean that misinformation is the biological or exclusive property of one ideology.

That interpretation would contradict Religare itself.

We are analyzing a historical case in which particular strategies have been extensively documented.

Another political group, in another territory and period, may also occupy attention in similar ways.

The possible mechanism belongs to all of us.

That is precisely the uncomfortable part of shared agency.

Religion: What Can I Plan With What Remained Available?

Now we enter Religare.

Religion = Planning.

Planning means producing representations of what does not yet exist.

Future.

Expectation.

Utopia.

Catastrophe.

Law.

Norm.

Hope.

If my pre-activated repertoire is dominated by threat, my imagined future may begin to be constructed from threat.

If “loss,” “enemy,” “fraud,” and “destruction” remain continuously accessible, an authoritarian proposal can begin to appear not authoritarian but protective.

Not because the Body-Territory has stopped thinking.

But because it is thinking with what it can recruit at that moment.

Then:

Religion — Planning:
“What future does this announce?”

↓

Politics — Choosing:
“Who protects or threatens that future?”

↓

Science — Doing:
“What do I do?”

Share?

Support?

Attack?

Ignore?

Vote?

Religare asks an earlier question:

Which representations participated together in constructing this sequence?

Perhaps Democracy Also Needs to Protect Space for Pre-Activating Alternatives

This transforms our opening question.

Perhaps a democracy does not depend only on ensuring that all information is formally available.

Perhaps it must also create conditions in which different representations remain cognitively available.

Time.

Education.

Art.

Silence.

Contact with different people.

Investigative journalism.

Science.

Community life.

Body.

Biome.

All of these may provide experiences capable of preventing one representational axis from continuously occupying what we are able to anticipate.

In 5D Consciousness, we do not simply want to teach a person what to think.

We want to expand their capacity to perceive:

“What movement is becoming ‘I’ right now?”

“Which representations were pre-activated when I interpreted this?”

“What am I feeling before I decide who caused that feeling?”

“Which representation would need to be available for me to change connectome?”

Perhaps this is one of the most important points of contact between Boudewyn and Religare.

Boudewyn and colleagues show that a narrative encounters different attentional states.

5D Consciousness adds a hypothesis:

each attentional state also encounters a Body-Territory with a particular set of activated and pre-activated representational spaces.

And Religare asks:

what happens to our Doing, Planning, and Choosing when that repertoire is no longer sufficiently plural to allow a new perception?

Perhaps limiting the futures a society can imagine does not require banning ideas.

It may be enough to make some representations so repeatedly available that others are almost never present when they are needed.

And perhaps freedom, in a truly secular and democratic society, must also mean this:

having enough space within and among our Body-Territories for a new representation to arrive before what we already feel chooses again on our behalf.

Main Reference

Boudewyn, M. A., Erickson, M. A., Winsler, K., Barch, D. M., Frank, M. J., Gold, J. M., Luck, S. J., MacDonald, A. W. III, Ragland, J. D., Silverstein, S. M., Yonelinas, A., & Carter, C. S. (2026). Distinct Attentional Control Profiles during Language Comprehension in Major Mental Health Disorders. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2026.06.015.

Complementary References

Bentes, A. (2023). Comunicação política da extrema-direita nas eleições de 2022: análise das narrativas de desinformação no Telegram. E-Compós, 26. DOI: 10.30962/ec.2960.

Cesarino, L. (2026). An Ecology of Mind Approach to Far-Right Publics in Brazil. Current Anthropology, 67(S28), S14–S24. DOI: 10.1086/738867.

Lansner, A., Fiebig, F., & Herman, P. (2023). Fast Hebbian plasticity and working memory. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 83, 102809. DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2023.102809.

Recuero, R., Soares, F. B., Vinhas, O., Volcan, T., Hüttner, L. R. G., & Silva, V. (2022). Bolsonaro and the Far Right: How Disinformation About COVID-19 Circulates on Facebook in Brazil. International Journal of Communication, 16, 148–171.

Udry, J., & Barber, S. J. (2024). The illusory truth effect: A review of how repetition increases belief in misinformation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 56, 101736. DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101736.

Vellani, V., Zheng, S., Ercelik, D., & Sharot, T. (2023). The illusory truth effect leads to the spread of misinformation. Cognition, 236, 105421. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105421.

BrainLatam (2026). Fruição, Metacognição 5D e Transcendência do Voto. Develops 5D Consciousness as a first-person conceptual hypothesis and discusses how experiences available before choice may continue to participate in what we later call a vote.

BrainLatam (2026). Qual é sua Pergunta? — Avatares Neurocientíficos Referenciais. Presents Rock, Paper, and Scissors as an operational metaphor for functional connectomes: speed/habit, fruition/metacognition, and deliberate analysis.

BrainLatam (2026). Quando respirar muda o cérebro e a experiência do eu. Develops the 5D Consciousness hypothesis that conscious experience emerges within a materially moving Body-Territory and articulates the conceptual use of activated and pre-activated representational spaces.