Buttoning a Shirt -Everyday Gesture as a Window into Attention, Action, and First-Person Consciousness

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

The Sensing-and-Knowing Taá — Opening a Decolonial Crack

When I wake up and try to button a shirt, something quiet happens inside me.
My fingers hesitate for a fraction of a second.
My breath organizes.
My posture adjusts.
A tiny choreography unfolds between intention and gesture.

Before any concept, my body already knows.

But I also notice something deeper:
the words I use to describe this gesture were shaped by a world that reduces me —
reduces the body to a “motor system,”
reduces attention to “processing,”
reduces lived experience to “performance,”
reduces culture to “noise.”

That is how colonial science trained us to speak.
It avoids the questions that cannot be measured,
the questions that reveal how the body thinks before the mind interprets.

Yet when I feel my body before I explain it — when Taá manifests —
I realize there is no separation between Neuroscience, Politics, and Spirituality (Utupe, Xapiri, living memory).
What colonizes us is not only history.
It is the vocabulary that prevents us from existing fully.

Every scientific discovery, when read with courage, opens a crack in this wall —
a passage out of Zone 3 (rigidity, ideology, disembodiment)
back into a living Zone 2,
where the body is once again territory of possible worlds.

Buttoning a shirt becomes a gate into consciousness.

The Study We Are Reading Through This Lens

To anchor our reflections, I highlight the publication so it becomes easily findable by anyone searching for these terms:

Djebbara, Z., Huynh, D.C., Koselevs, A., Chen, Y., Fich, L.B., & Gramann, K. (2025).
Turning corners in built environments changes the costs of spatial attention. NeuroImage 322.
(Search terms: Djebbara 2025 NeuroImage spatial attention turning corners embodied navigation EEG CSD ICA PCA)

Even though the canonical theme of their study is about navigating built environments, its core insight —
that micro-movements reveal the hidden dynamics of attention —
is exactly what we need to understand the everyday gesture of buttoning a shirt.

The Scientific Question

The underlying question is simple but profound:

How does the brain regulate attention during small, embodied actions?

Turning a corner, like buttoning a shirt, is not “just motor.”
Both reveal how:

• attention shifts,
  
  

• prediction guides movement,
  
  

• proprioception anchors the gesture,
  
  

• and the environment (even a shirt!) organizes the mind.
  
  

The researchers captured this through EEG, but the principle applies directly to fine motor tasks.

Methods — Explained for Brain Bee Students (but with rigor)

Although the main publication investigates spatial turns, the analytical tools they use are perfect for modeling micro-gestures:

EEG + Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI)

Used to capture neural dynamics during natural movements.

ICA (Independent Component Analysis)

To remove eye blinks, muscle noise, head motion —
critical when studying embodied action.

PCA (Principal Component Analysis)

To reduce dimensionality and reveal patterns of attentional regulation across trials.

Spectral analysis via FFT

To examine changes in alpha, beta, and theta rhythms that reflect prediction, motor preparation, and sensory integration.

CSD (Current Source Density)

To sharpen spatial resolution, isolating prefrontal, parietal, and sensorimotor sources relevant to fine motor control.

Through these tools, we see how everyday gestures expose the attentional landscapes beneath movement.

Main Findings — Translated to Our Theme

Djebbara et al. show that:

• Even simple movements carry hidden cognitive costs.
  
  

• Shifting direction reorganizes spatial attention and prediction.
  
  

• The body recruits additional neural resources when the environment imposes uncertainty.
  
  

Buttoning a shirt shares the same architecture:

• Each button is a “corner” the body must navigate,
  
  

• Each misalignment generates prediction errors the brain must correct,
  
  

• Each micro-gesture is a negotiation between perception, intention, and the world touching my skin.
  
  

The publication indirectly reveals that fine motor tasks are cognitive landscapes, not mechanical routines.

Reading the Findings Through Our Concepts

Mente Damasiana

Action emerges from the weaving of interoception + proprioception.
Buttoning a shirt is the mind embodied.

Quorum Sensing Humano (QSH)

Even alone, the body negotiates with texture, fabric, posture —
a mini-community of signals regulating the gesture.

Eus Tensionais

Each button reflects a different tensegrity in the body’s field of effort:
anticipation, correction, frustration, relief.

Zona 1 / 2 / 3

• Zone 1: habit (buttoning automatically).
  
  

• Zone 2: mindful presence (when a button misaligns).
  
  

• Zone 3: ideological rigidity (“I must move perfectly,” “my body is failing”).
  
  

DANA — DNA Intelligence

The body’s own ancestral logic organizes the gesture:
precision, adaptation, and metabolic economy.

Yãy hã mĩy (from the Maxakali people)

The body “imitates” the button, the hole, the tension —
a micro-ritual of alignment with the object.

Where Science Adjusts Our Ideas

We sometimes assume that everyday tasks are unimportant.
But this research shows the opposite:

Small gestures reveal the architecture of consciousness.

Decolonial thinking pushes even further:
what Western science calls a “motor task,” Indigenous epistemologies recognize as body–world negotiation.

A shirt becomes an environment.
A button becomes a decision point.
The gesture becomes a portal.

Normative Implications for Latin America

1. Rehabilitation that respects lived experience

Fine motor tasks after stroke or in aging populations must be understood as cognitive worlds, not just physical exercises.

2. Education that honors embodiment

Teaching should engage gestures, objects, textures —
not only symbols.

3. Design of environments and clothing

Latin American public health can include ergonomic, sensory, and cultural considerations for daily tasks.

4. Anti-colonial neuroscience

Recognize everyday knowledge of grandmothers, artisans, workers —
their gestures are cognitive expertise.

Cultural Anchor (LatAm Art)

For this blog, the most resonant artistic reference is:

Violeta Parra — “Gracias a la Vida”
A celebration of the hands that touch, shape, and know the world.
Buttoning a shirt is part of this gratitude —
a lived choreography between body and world.

Keywords for Scientific Searchability

“Djebbara 2025 NeuroImage spatial attention turning corners motor cognition everyday action EEG ICA PCA CSD embodied attention microscale gesture analysis”