Emotional processing in children with oppositional behavior

A fractured Jiwasa between mother and child and what fNIRS reveals about the body that struggles with emotions

(First-Person Consciousness • Decolonial Neuroscience • Brain Bee • The Feeling and Knowing Taá)

The Feeling and Knowing Taá — opening a crack for decolonization

I see a child saying “no” all the time.
They scowl, cross their arms, provoke, challenge.
In my own body I feel the mixture of exhaustion, anger, guilt and love.

A part of me thinks:
“he is stubborn,”
“she is disobedient,”
“this boy is going to be trouble.”

My Taá feels first: it feels the wear and tear, the conflict, the daily clash.
But I know that Taá also gets things wrong:
just as I feel that the Sun goes around the Earth,
just as I feel that the moon is bigger on the horizon,
I can feel that this child is “bad” —
when in fact something much deeper is happening in their body.

I also notice that even the words I use to talk about this child have been colonized.
The language with which I describe the “difficult child” was shaped to reduce:

• reduce the body to a defective machine,
  
  

• the mind to a deficit,
  
  

• spirituality to superstition,
  
  

• politics to obedience, consumption and productivity.
  
  

This is how many scientific and clinical models still look at oppositional behavior:
as failure, deviation, a problem to be corrected, and not as a fractured Jiwasa —
a singular inclusive pronoun between mother and child that has lost its continuity of belonging.

When I feel my body before I think — when Taá manifests —
I realize there is no separation between Neuroscience, Politics and Spirituality (Utupe, Xapiri, living memory).
What colonizes is not only history:
it is the word that calls “disorder” what may also be a cry of context, of violence, of non-belonging.

Every scientific discovery, when read with courage, is a crack of freedom that breaks open Zone 3
and gives the body back — including the body of the child labeled “oppositional” —
to what it has always been: a living territory of possible worlds.

It is in this space that I read the study by Peizhong Wang, Ting He, Wenrui Zhang, Peilian Chi and Xiuyun Lin, published in 2025 in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience:
“Emotion process deficits in children with ODD and their associations with different dimensions of ODD symptoms: A fNIRS study.”

The scientific question: what happens to emotion in the brain of the “oppositional” child?

Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) is described as a persistent pattern of:

• irritable mood,
  
  

• defiant behavior,
  
  

• arguing and resentment.
  
  

But the authors ask something more subtle:
Which emotional processes in the brain are altered in these children?
And how do these alterations connect to the two core dimensions of ODD: affective symptoms and behavioral symptoms?

To answer this, they use fNIRS to look directly at prefrontal hemodynamics while children:

• recognize emotions in faces (ERC – emotion recognition),
  
  

• regulate their emotions in the face of emotional stimuli (ERG – emotion regulation).
  
  

How the study was done: fNIRS, GLM, HRF and the dual path of emotion

They evaluated 72 children:

• 35 with ODD,
  
  

• 37 with typical development (control group).
  
  

All children performed:

• emotion recognition tasks (ERC) – identifying emotional expressions,
  
  

• emotion regulation tasks (ERG) – modulating their reaction to emotional stimuli.
  
  

Meanwhile, prefrontal cortex activity was measured with fNIRS, focusing on regions such as:

• SFGmed (medial superior frontal gyrus),
  
  

• SFGdor (dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus),
  
  

• MFG (middle frontal gyrus).
  
  

Analysis pipeline (Brain Bee mode)

The O₂-Hb and HHb concentration signals were modeled with a General Linear Model (GLM),
using a Hemodynamic Response Function (HRF) appropriate to task timing.

Short-channels were included to capture superficial noise (skin, extracortical vessels),
increasing the chance that what remains is in fact cortical activity.

ICA/PCA techniques help separate physiological components (breathing, heartbeat, movement)
from task-related components.

After that, the authors employ path analysis,
a form of multivariate analysis that tests how neural deficits in specific areas
connect to different dimensions of affective and behavioral symptoms.

What they found: behavior looks “okay,” but emotion is quiet

Something very striking appears in the results:

Children without ODD show robust prefrontal activations:

• right MFG,
  
  

• right SFGdor,
  
  

• bilateral SFGmed during emotion recognition (ERC),
  
  

• and right SFGdor during emotion regulation (ERG).
  
  

Children with ODD do not show these clear activation patterns,
even though their behavior in the tasks (hits, errors) is not so different.

In other words:
on the outside, performance can look “okay”;
on the inside, the prefrontal cortex is not engaging in the same way.

When the authors run the path analysis, they find a dual path:

• Neural deficits in SFGmed during emotion recognition (ERC) predict more affective symptoms (irritability, resentment).
  
  

• Neural deficits in SFGdor during emotion regulation (ERG) predict more behavioral symptoms (arguing, open defiance).
  
  

They propose a dual-process model of emotion in ODD:

• one more affective axis – linked to how the child recognizes and feels emotion;
  
  

• one more behavioral axis – linked to how they regulate (or fail to regulate) that emotion.
  
  

Reading with our concepts: fractured Jiwasa, Jiwasa to rebuild

When I look at these data through our concepts, I see several layers:

Damasian Mind and Tensional Selves

The Damasian Mind says that consciousness arises from the encounter between:

• interoception (internal sensations),
  
  

• proprioception (position and movement of the body).
  
  

In ODD, the data suggest that:

• the child sees the face,
  
  

• but the prefrontal cortex does not properly organize the bridge between what they feel and what they do;
  
  

• the Tensional Self that appears is a self of defense, fight, opposition —
  a way of existing that protects from emotional pain, but breaks the flow with the other.
  
  

Human Quorum Sensing and Jiwasa

Instead of thinking “problem child,” I think in terms of Jiwasa:
a singular inclusive pronoun that is at the same time “I” and “we” between mother and child.

In a healthy Jiwasa:

• the mother’s body regulates the child’s body,
  
  

• tone of voice, gaze, touch create a field of co-regulation,
  
  

• Human Quorum Sensing (QSH) is intact.
  
  

In ODD contexts, very often:

• Jiwasa is fractured,
  
  

• the child and caregiver can no longer enter the same frequency,
  
  

• gestures of care are perceived as threat,
  
  

• limits turn into war.
  
  

Even though this particular study does not measure the dyad directly,
it shows how, on the inside, the child’s brain is already organized for fight,
not for co-regulation.

DANA and a non-fixed destiny

DANA — the intelligence of DNA — did not write into the code “forever challenging child.”
It wrote: plastic system, that can:

• learn finer regulations,
  
  

• find new pathways for the prefrontal cortex to engage,
  
  

• rebuild Jiwasa with support, time and context.
  
  

Latin American art as a mirror of this broken Jiwasa

When I think of children with oppositional behavior in Latin American contexts,
Eduardo Galeano’s “Los nadies” comes to mind —
“the nobodies” who do not count, are not measured, do not appear in statistics,
and are only noticed when they “cause trouble.”

The child with ODD is often an emotional “nadie”:

• no one asks what their body is trying to say,
  
  

• no one measures the physiological cost of living in permanent conflict,
  
  

• no one sees the silent prefrontal cortex trying not to collapse.
  
  

Reading this article with Galeano at my side is a reminder that:
there is no ODD outside of history, poverty, violence, racism,
nor outside the colonial expectations of obedience and productivity.

Avatar and BrainLatam2026 framing

When we anchor ourselves in the avatar Olmeca,
I can see this study as a snapshot showing
how culture, family and school mediate the child’s brain:

• the face is not just a neutral stimulus;
  
  

• it is the face of a tired mother, an irritated teacher,
  
  

• an authority figure carrying centuries of colonization in the words they use.
  
  

Olmeca reminds me that it is not only prefrontal cortex at stake,
but also the way culture defines what a “good child” and a “difficult child” are,
within a Latin American history where those who resist have always been punished.

Where science adjusts our ideas

This article corrects several simplifications:

• It shows that looking only at behavior is not enough:
  the child may “get it right” in the task, and still the brain does not engage like a typical child’s.
  
  

• It shows that affect and behavior are different axes:
  affective symptoms connect more strongly to deficits in emotion recognition,
  and behavioral symptoms to deficits in regulation.
  
  

• It suggests that talking only about “lack of limits” is far too shallow:
  there is a specific neurohemodynamic pattern, a particular body–brain mode of operating in the world.
  
  

For us, this confirms that:

• Zone 3 is not only political ideology;
  it can also be a state in which the child is trapped in defensive patterns,
  with little room for Zone 2 — enjoyment, play, creation.
  
  

The way out is not just to punish or medicate,
but to create contexts that rebuild Jiwasa,
with patience, art, culture and evidence-based science.

Implications for education, clinical work and LATAM policies

School

• Teacher training to understand ODD as a matter of emotional processing, not just discipline.
  
  

• Spaces for emotional regulation in school (music, movement, breathing, art).
  
  

Clinic

• Use of fNIRS and other techniques not as labels,
  but as a way to show families that there is a brain in effort — not a “spoiled” character.
  
  

Public policy

• Parenting-support programs in vulnerable territories,
  treating the mother–child Jiwasa as a unit of care.
  
  

• Policies that recognize that externalized anger in childhood is often a response
  to colonial contexts of humiliation, racism and poverty.
  
  

Scientific search keywords

“Wang 2025 Emotion process deficits in children with ODD dimensions fNIRS prefrontal ERC ERG SFGmed SFGdor Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience”

When Two Brains Receive the Same World - Cooperation, synchrony, and the shared rhythm of attention

Embodied Singing -Voice, interoception, and Body-Territory in vocal expertise

Pleasant Odors and the Breath that Organizes Us - How smell organizes brain–body coupling

Architecture That Thinks With Me - Turning corners and the attentional cost of built environments

Auditory Approach Bias From Birth - How newborns and adults code the desire to listen

Beta Waves and the Moment I Truly Decide - The prefrontal cortex as the space where "feeling" becomes "choosing"

How My Brain Encodes Voice in Midlife - F0, listening effort, and the vitality of human hearing

Learning Beside Another Brain - Hyperscanning and the pedagogy of co-presence

Reproducibility in fNIRS - When can I trust the hemodynamic curve I see?

HRfunc and the True Shape of the Hemodynamic Response - Why every brain breathes light in its own way

Mixed Reality and Decision-Making - How the brain evaluates prototypes and hybrid worlds

Intense Exercise and the Awakening of Zone 2 - The hemodynamics of effort and the body that generates intelligence

Buttoning a Shirt - Everyday actions as windows into attention, gesture, and consciousness

Depression, tDCS, and the Prefrontal Cortex - Reigniting silent circuits

Designing fNIRS Studies in Real-World Environments - Why science must step outside the laboratory to exist

Transformers and Virtual Short-Channels - AI cleaning brain signals and retelling hemodynamics

Mental Fatigue and Performance - When the head gives up before the body

Cold Water and the Brain - Oxygenation, cold, and the consciousness of the limit

Walking After Stroke - Cognitive–motor interference in everyday life

Balance and the Cerebellum in Parkinson’s Disease - Movement, tensions, and reorganization of the Body-Territory

Freezing of Gait and the Loss of the Body’s Own Quorum - When the body stops trusting the next step

Children With Cochlear Implants - Learning to hear through the brain, not just the device

Emotional Processing in Children With Oppositional Behavior - Regulation, conflict, and the birth of Tensional Selves

Mild Cognitive Impairment - Early hemodynamic signs and presence in the world

Pain, Apathy, and Depression in Dementia - When feeling and thinking stop walking together

Cognitive Load - How much does fNIRS really feel my mental effort?

The Brain in Daily Life -Assisted horsemanship, sport, and embodied enjoyment

Linguistic Jiwasa - When language thinks the world

Dialogical Multiplication and Indigenous Psychology - How to let psychology listen without erasing the Other

The Feeling and Knowing Taá of Christmas 

Republican Capitalism of Spirits without Bodies

NIRS fNIRS EEG ERP Multimodal NIRS-EEG

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#Neuroscience
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