The Cry of Decolonial Neuroscience – Between Evidence and Belonging - SfN Brain Bee FALAN

Consciousness in First Person

“I am Consciousness in search. I am not merely neurons firing, nor an isolated abstraction. I am the flow that emerges from attention amplifying my senses: sometimes I focus on the red that strikes my eyes, sometimes on the cry of a child, sometimes on the smell that warns of danger. Each adjustment I make is a tensional self, a living reference inside the Damasian Mind, from which I perceive the world.

It is not enough for me to repeat colonial narratives of profit, accumulation, or an eternal existential self. My freedom is inscribed in DNA as the right to express itself in the now. I want a science that sees the materiality of my body, my territory, my belonging. I want a neuroscience that is free, critical, and decolonial.”

Part 1 – Neuroscience with Evidence

Contemporary neuroscience, grounded in evidence, confirms key principles of learning and cognition:

• Neuroplasticity – Meaningful learning happens when new information connects to existing networks. Each connection strengthens synapses and consolidates long-term memory.
  
  

• Attention as an amplifier – Attention does not create information; it regulates which inputs are prioritized. This organizes neural energy, prevents overload, and sustains focus.
  
  

• Working memory and cognitive load – Tools such as concept maps reduce the load on working memory by externalizing relationships between ideas, freeing cognitive resources for critical reasoning.
  
  

• Metacognition – Reflecting on how one learns activates prefrontal networks linked to executive control, enabling self-regulated learning.
  
  

• Multimodality – Integrating text, image, sound, and movement recruits broader brain networks, enhancing retention and deep understanding.
  
  

In short, neuroscience confirms that deep learning depends on graded attention, meaningful connections, multimodal organization, and metacognitive reflection.

Part 2 – Decolonial Neuroscience

Yet evidence must not remain trapped in colonial narratives. Beyond how we learn, we must ask: for whom and for what do we learn?

A Decolonial Neuroscience widens this horizon:

• Body-Territory – The body is not an isolated machine but an extension of territory. Learning is metabolizing the world around and within us. Colonial fragmentation separated body and space; decoloniality reintegrates them.
  
  

• Human Quorum Sensing (QSH) – Just as bacteria coordinate collective behavior through quorum sensing, humans sense their belonging to the larger organism called society. Those who control information flows (big techs, Planet 01 elites) also control belonging itself. Decolonial neuroscience restores QSH as a foundation of real, embodied community.
  
  

• Tensional Selves – Consciousness is not a fixed essence but the programming of attention that creates points of speech and perception. Colonialism imposed the myth of an eternal existential self; decoloniality recognizes the fluidity and plurality of tensional selves, observable in connectomes and EEG microstates.
  
  

• Secular Spirituality – Not dogma, but DNA expressing itself in the now. A spirituality that manifests biologically and relationally, as living intelligence guaranteeing belonging.
  
  

Where conventional neuroscience shows how we learn, decolonial neuroscience reveals how we belong. The two are not opposed; they complete one another. Evidence and critique must unite to build a science committed to life, territory, and emancipation.

Conclusion

We, at Brain Support, work side by side with neuroscience researchers across Latin American universities. We value evidence-based science, yet we also affirm the urgency of a Decolonial Neuroscience.

It is time to overcome the colonial local optima that restrict questions, limit horizons, and serve only the profit of a few. A new neuroscience must arise: anchored in evidence, yet free to reclaim body-territory, Human Quorum Sensing, tensional selves, and the genetic freedom of DNA expression.

This is the inaugural cry of a science that is free, secular, and rooted in the now.