When Perception Becomes Valuation -  From Where Do We Judge What We See?

Two people look at the same image.

One says:

“What a pleasant place.”

The other:

“I would not feel safe here.”

The pixel configuration may be practically identical.

So where did the difference come from?

In the previous blog, we started from the work of Carolina Zähme, Isabelle Sander, Aleksandrs Koselevs, Simone Kühn, and Klaus Gramann, From perception to appraisal: Brain responses to natural and built features in urban environments.

The study shows that natural and built visual characteristics of urban scenes are associated with EEG responses at moments different from those related to subjective appraisal. In other words, detecting characteristics of a scene and assigning value to it do not appear to need to occur as one undifferentiated neural event.

Now we want to move further:

From where do we judge what we perceive?

For Religare, we first need to ask where Perceiving itself comes from.

To Perceive, We Need Consciousness

Within 5D Consciousness, we do not use Perceiving as a synonym for all sensory processing.

Before conscious Perceiving, light has already been transduced, circuits recruited, stimulus characteristics discriminated, and different representations may already have participated in processing.

But in our model, Perceiving requires consciousness.

Our formulation is:

Consciousness is a movement that perceives itself as Being within the metabolism that produced it.

This is a BrainLatam conceptual hypothesis, not a consensual definition of consciousness in neuroscience.

It allows us, however, to distinguish:

processing

from

first-person Perceiving.

And a new Perceiving never encounters an empty brain.

Activated, Pre-Activated, and the Next Perceiving

We propose that, in order to process a new event, the Body-Territory recruits activated and pre-activated circuits.

Recent memories.

Expectations.

Bodily states.

Associations.

Attention.

Representations that are sufficiently available.

When a new Perceiving emerges, it itself begins to participate in this repertoire.

Thus:

activated + pre-activated + stimulus

↓

processing

↓

Perceiving

↓

new activation

↓

new conditions for the next Perceiving.

Contemporary neuroscience shows that representations can alternate between more active and more latent states. In 2023, Watanabe and colleagues observed cycles of goal silencing and reactivation in frontal and parietal cortices during complex problem-solving. Activity-silent models likewise propose that information may remain available without requiring persistently elevated activity.

Our hypothesis goes beyond these findings.

Approximately 15 Activations: Not Drawers, but Priority

At BrainLatam, we provisionally work with an order of magnitude of approximately 15 preferentially recruitable activations.

This does not mean fifteen conscious items.

It does not mean fifteen working-memory “slots.”

And it does not mean that the sixteenth event erases the first.

Our hypothesis concerns recruitment priority.

While certain circuits remain sufficiently recent, repeated, or relevant, they may be more readily recruited into the next processing event.

As new activations continuously enter, some older ones may progressively become less easy to recruit.

But in which functional mode might this become especially important?

In what we call Rock.

Rock Is Not Simply “Thinking Fast”

Rock is not merely another name for Kahneman’s System 1.

Within the BrainLatam model, Rock represents an operational grouping of functional configurations characterized by strong sensorimotor and somatosensory participation, automation, habit, rapid execution, and high performance.

An experienced athlete does not consciously reconstruct every movement.

A musician does not calculate every finger position.

A trained driver performs countless corrections without deliberating about each of them.

Proprioceptive and somatosensory information is fundamental to efficient motor execution, and recent motor-learning literature shows how practice can progressively transform responses that initially require deliberate control into increasingly automated skills.

Automation increases speed.

But efficiency and flexibility are not exactly the same thing.

Rock works because the organism does not need to search through everything it has ever experienced before acting.

It needs to rapidly recruit what is sufficiently available.

In the BrainLatam formulation:

Rock — sensorimotor / Think Fast

makes it possible to replicate what is already known;

execute skills;

use habits;

respond rapidly;

and maintain high performance.

This does not mean that the prefrontal cortex “switches off,” nor that Rock is located in one single brain region.

It is a functional metaphor for distributed network organization.

But Where Do the Pre-Activations We Wake Up With Come From?

Here a new hypothesis becomes important.

Perhaps our pre-activations are not only what happened during the previous few minutes.

They may also reflect processes that occurred while we were asleep.

Sleep is not an empty interruption of brain activity.

Recent research shows that memories encoded during wakefulness can be spontaneously reactivated during sleep and participate in consolidation, integration, and reorganization. Reactivation during NREM sleep, including slow-wave sleep, has strong experimental support.

It would therefore be inaccurate to say that good deep sleep simply “resets” our activations.

Instead, we can ask something different:

Does a good sleep cycle reorganize which representations will be more available when we return to conscious Perceiving?

This question is compatible with contemporary findings on reactivation and consolidation, although its specific connection to our approximately 15 activations remains a BrainLatam hypothesis.

After a good night of sleep, perhaps we wake with a different priority repertoire from the one with which we went to bed.

Some recent experiences may have been reinforced.

Others integrated.

Others may have lost priority.

And many of these reactivations do not need to reach conscious recollection.

REM Is Not Simply Remembering Dreams

This also helps avoid another confusion.

REM sleep, dreaming, and memory are not the same thing.

Memory reactivations can occur during sleep without later becoming consciously reportable. Recent studies show reactivation during NREM as well as evidence of reactivation during REM, while the direct relationship between memory reactivation and dream content remains complex.

Therefore, not remembering a particular dream does not mean that nothing happened to our representations during sleep.

For our hypothesis, this is especially interesting:

perhaps some of what wakes up pre-activated is not what we wake up remembering.

And What Happens After We Pick Up the Phone?

Here we enter a historically very recent condition.

For much of human history, after waking, the Body-Territory encountered a relatively limited number of immediate events.

Today we may wake up and, within minutes, encounter:

messages;

news;

videos;

comments;

outrage;

advertising;

WhatsApp;

Instagram;

TikTok;

email;

search engines;

and now artificial intelligence systems capable of generating virtually unlimited content.

Each encounter can produce a new activation.

Each notification can redirect attention.

Each video can anticipate the next topic.

Each AI response can open ten more questions.

Our hypothesis is that we may be creating a condition of hyper-pre-activation.

Not because the brain simply stores everything.

Almost the opposite.

We receive so many candidates for activation that the system must continuously select what will remain sufficiently available to be recruited.

Recent reviews of digital environments describe information overload, constant interruptions, task switching, and difficulties maintaining sustained attention. Information overload has also been associated with poorer decision-making and greater cognitive pressure.

This does not demonstrate the hypothesis of approximately 15 activations.

But it makes the hypothesis worth testing.

Perhaps the Problem Is Not Too Much Information, but Too Little Time

We may have access to more information than any previous generation.

And still have less time between one activation and the next.

That difference is fundamental.

The problem may not simply be:

“I received too much information.”

It may be:

“I received a new activation before I had time to reorganize the previous one.”

If we remain in Rock — scrolling, responding, sharing, reacting — the efficiency of that functional mode may favor exactly what it does best:

rapidly recruiting what is currently available and moving forward.

Some older activations may therefore stop participating in subsequent perceptions before they have been compared, contextualized, or integrated.

We have more and more content.

But perhaps not always enough time to think about what has just modified us.

AI Can Intensify This — or Do the Opposite

It would be simplistic to claim that artificial intelligence necessarily worsens cognition.

AI can multiply information and accelerate the succession of stimuli.

But it can also function as cognitive offloading, organize content, retrieve forgotten information, and support metacognitive processes.

Emerging research suggests that generative tools can be useful when employed together with shared metacognition and deliberate externalization of cognitive load.

Therefore, the Religare question is not:

“Is AI good or bad?”

It is:

“In which connectome am I using AI?”

If I use it to request twenty successive answers without reflecting on any of them, I may be feeding Rock.

If I use it to compare hypotheses, seek counterarguments, and reconstruct what I had stopped recruiting, it may help Scissors.

If I use it to perceive my own assumptions, it may also favor Paper.

Relation Before Subject and Object

This dynamic brings us back to Latin American relational ontologies.

Across different Aymara, Mapuche, Guarani/Kaiowá, Kichwa, and Maya traditions, contemporary researchers describe relationships in which person, territory, and other beings do not necessarily begin as entirely independent entities that only later become connected.

Jiwasa, tekoha, che/mapu, pacha, and the relational worlds of the Maya milpa are not equivalent concepts.

Nor do they “explain” 5D Consciousness.

But they allow us to question a deeply Western premise:

Does the perceiver really remain the same after perceiving?

Alejandro Haber provocatively proposes that knowledge is relationship.

Astrid Ulloa and Sofía Zaragocin work with Body-Territories as lived relations.

Izaque João shows that tekoha is not merely an external surface on which someone lives, but a place constituted through relationships that allow a particular way of living to exist.

These perspectives help us refine our hypothesis:

what is perceived becomes imbricated in the perceiver because the perceptual event modifies the material repertoire of the Body-Territory that will continue to perceive.

From Perceiving to Planning and Judging

After Perceiving, we can represent what has not yet happened.

Within Religare:

Religion = Planning.

“What if this continues?”

“What if I enter there?”

“What if this person is right?”

“What if this territory disappears?”

Then we assign value.

Politics = Judging / Choosing.

“This is good.”

“This is dangerous.”

“This should be preserved.”

“This should be prohibited.”

Some judgments can happen rapidly in Rock.

Others require the recovery of alternatives that were not among our priority activations.

This is where Scissors — Think Slowly enters: comparison, inference, segmentation, analysis, and greater participation of prefrontal control networks.

And perhaps Paper also enters:

Can I perceive the state from which I am judging?

What Has Fallen Outside My Recruitment?

Perhaps this is one of the most important questions for a hyperconnected society.

After sleep, we wake with a certain repertoire.

Then come messages.

Videos.

News.

Arguments.

Algorithms.

AI.

New Perceivings become new activations.

And, if our hypothesis is correct, something progressively becomes less recruitable.

The question is therefore not only:

“What do I know?”

But:

“What is still sufficiently available to participate in what I am thinking now?”

“What did I perceive today that has already changed the one who will perceive tomorrow?”

“Which relationship stopped being recruited because fifteen others came afterward?”

“Do I need to remain in Rock, or do I need time for Scissors and Paper to reorganize the field?”

Zähme and colleagues showed that perceiving characteristics of a scene and evaluating it do not need to occur at the same moment.

5D Consciousness adds that, for us, Perceiving requires consciousness:

a movement that perceives itself as Being within the metabolism that produced it.

And Religare adds perhaps the most uncomfortable question:

When I finally say “I judged,” how many events had already materially participated in constructing that “I” — and how many others had temporarily fallen outside what I was able to recruit?

Main Reference

Zähme, C., Sander, I., Koselevs, A., Kühn, S., & Gramann, K. (2026). From perception to appraisal: Brain responses to natural and built features in urban environments. Brain and Environment, 8, 100028. DOI: 10.1016/j.braen.2026.100028.

Complementary References

Carbone, J., & Diekelmann, S. (2024). An update on recent advances in targeted memory reactivation during sleep. npj Science of Learning, 9, 31. DOI: 10.1038/s41539-024-00244-8.

Denis, D., & Cairney, S. A. (2023). Neural reactivation during human sleep. Emerging Topics in Life Sciences, 7(5), 487–498. DOI: 10.1042/ETLS20230109.

Haber, A. (2022). O conhecimento é o relacionamento: cenas de gnosiologia catamarcana. Revista de Arqueologia, 35(1), 39–52. DOI: 10.24885/sab.v35i1.957.

Ibáñez, A., Melloni, L., Świeboda, P., et al. (2024). Neuroecological links of the exposome and One Health. Neuron, 112(12), 1905–1910. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.04.016.

João, I. (2022). Autonomia kaiowá e guarani: a ação dos ñanderu e ñandesy na criação do tekoha. Revista de Antropologia. DOI: 10.11606/1678-9857.ra.2022.204550.

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.

Mercado, K., & de Lafuente, V. (2022). Prefrontal and Premotor Cortices Encode Inference Judgements. Neuroscience, 485, 145–146. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2022.01.011.

Picard-Deland, C., Bernardi, G., Genzel, L., Dresler, M., & Schoch, S. F. (2023). Memory reactivations during sleep: a neural basis of dream experiences? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(6), 568–582. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2023.02.006.

Ulloa, A., & Zaragocin, S. (2022). Diàlegs sobre feminismes, ambientalismes i racismes des de les geografies feministes llatinoamericanes. Documents d’Anàlisi Geogràfica, 68(3), 481–491. DOI: 10.5565/rev/dag.743.

Villarroel Cárdenas, V., Sanhueza-Estay, C., & Quintriqueo Millán, S. (2022). Ontología relacional mapuche, conocimiento susceptible de articular al conocimiento escolar. Diálogos sobre Educación, 13(25).

Watanabe, K., Kadohisa, M., Kusunoki, M., Buckley, M. J., & Duncan, J. (2023). Cycles of goal silencing and reactivation underlie complex problem-solving in primate frontal and parietal cortex. Nature Communications, 14, 5054. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40676-1.