Could the Connectomic Reserve Be Waiting for a We?

Dreams, metacognition, egregore, and the neural connections not yet recruited

When One Dreams of Being Many

Last night, you may have lived an extraordinary experience.

You met people, had conversations, and traveled through unfamiliar places. Perhaps you felt fear, joy, or love. Someone said something unexpected. You responded.

Perhaps you became different people or witnessed events from perspectives unlike those you recognize as your own.

Then you woke up.

Where were those characters?

Who produced their voices, intentions, and movements?

A single Body-Territory participated in generating that entire experience.

We do not need to assume that several independent consciousnesses inhabit the brain. Yet we can recognize something fascinating: One can experience Many, construct relationships, and feel transformed by characters emerging from its own brain activity.

And perhaps it cannot remember everything upon awakening.

This leads us to a question.

How many possibilities of perceiving, feeling, and Being remain difficult to access in the state in which we recognize ourselves right now?

The Connections We Have Yet to Understand

In 2026, Brazilian researchers Roberto Lent, Fernanda Tovar-Moll, and Diego Szczupak published the Connectomic Reserve hypothesis in the journal Brain.

During brain development, numerous neural projections are established and reorganized. Some connections may persist even when they do not participate extensively in the circuits most frequently recruited.

The authors propose investigating whether part of this anatomical architecture constitutes a reserve for neuroplasticity.

This does not mean that connections are consciously waiting to awaken.

It means that the brain may retain structural possibilities whose functional contributions we do not yet fully understand.

The hypothesis remains open to experimental validation.

At BrainLatam, we add another question:

Could certain individual or relational experiences favor functional configurations that are rarely expressed under other conditions?

We call this possibility the Relational Connectomic Reserve.

We must distinguish two things: changes in the activity of existing networks do not demonstrate that reserve anatomical connections have been recruited.

But this distinction does not diminish our curiosity.

It shows us what we need to investigate.

Does the Brain Change While We Dream?

Sleep is not a single brain state.

We alternate between different stages, including NREM and REM sleep.

During REM, dreams frequently involve vivid narratives, intense imagery, emotions, and imagined movements, while much of the skeletal musculature undergoes a marked reduction in muscle tone.

However, we also dream during NREM sleep.

Francesca Siclari and colleagues demonstrated, using high-density EEG, that certain changes in activity within posterior cortical regions are associated with reports of dream experiences across both sleep types.

Therefore, dreaming is not simply a matter of switching on a circuit exclusive to REM sleep.

But something even more interesting emerges.

We can experience movements while our bodies do not execute them as voluntary waking movements.

Perhaps we run through a forest in a dream.

Perhaps we talk to someone.

Perhaps we prepare a response.

How might we investigate Movement Completion when an imagined gesture does not have to become a corresponding muscular action?

When We Know We Are Dreaming

Some people recognize, during a dream itself, that they are dreaming.

We call this experience lucid dreaming.

In 2025, Çağatay Demirel and colleagues, including Brazilian researchers Sérgio Mota-Rolim and Sidarta Ribeiro, published an electrophysiological investigation of lucid dreaming.

The researchers identified differences in neural activity and functional connectivity among lucid dreaming, non-lucid REM sleep, and wakefulness.

Some changes involved alpha and gamma oscillations and patterns of communication among brain regions.

This does not demonstrate an anatomical Connectomic Reserve.

But it indicates that REM sleep itself can involve different functional organizations associated with changes in self-awareness and the experience of control.

Now imagine realizing that you are dreaming.

You remain within that experience.

The characters remain.

But your relationship with them may change.

Perhaps you stop reacting automatically and begin asking questions.

Could this provide an experimental window for investigating metacognition within the multiplicity of One?

Could an Egregore Begin Within Us?

In Religare — Full Religiosity in a Democratic, Secular State Governed by the Rule of Law, we developed the concepts of CRIAturas, the I Am Room, and Egregore.

These expressions emerged from a spiritual and philosophical language.

Today, we can bring them into dialogue with questions about internal representations, memory, perspectives of the self, and metacognition, without claiming scientific equivalence.

We describe an Egregore as a space of encounter and dialogue among contrasting possibilities of Being.

Such an encounter does not necessarily require two bodies.

Imagine that you need to make an important decision.

One perspective recognizes an opportunity.

Another remembers a threat.

A third feels curious.

Another asks whether past experiences still justify that fear.

Who is making the decision?

We do not need to imagine independent entities controlling your brain.

We can investigate different processes of evaluation, memory, emotion, and self-regulation.

When we become able to recognize these perspectives and reorganize our responses, we approach what science calls metacognition.

Perhaps Jiwasa could also be investigated as a possibility of reciprocity among internal perspectives.

Not as a conclusion, but as a question.

Is Dreaming of Others a Collective Experience?

Jarno Tuominen, Antti Revonsuo, and colleagues investigated the hypothesis that dreams simulate social experiences.

In 2019, they found a greater presence of social events in the dream reports they analyzed than in corresponding waking reports.

This provides partial support for Social Simulation Theory, but it does not demonstrate that dreaming necessarily improves our collective abilities.

Nevertheless, the finding is provocative.

During a dream, we may negotiate, escape, welcome, reject, and learn within imagined relationships.

The feelings we experience can be intense.

Yet the character we encounter does not need to possess a separate brain.

We therefore have an experiential multiplicity generated by a single Body-Territory.

When we encounter other people while awake, additional conditions emerge: their bodies possess histories, perceptions, and capacities to act independently of our expectations.

Perhaps this difference is decisive.

An internal Egregore may offer imagined disagreements.

An interbodily relationship may offer disagreements we cannot individually control.

Memory: Living Is Not the Same as Remembering

Brazilian neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro, together with Daniel Almeida-Filho and Claudio Queiroz, examined mechanisms through which REM sleep participates in memory consolidation.

Their 2018 review discusses cellular and systems processes related to the reorganization of information between the hippocampus and cortex.

But consolidating a memory does not necessarily mean being able to describe it upon awakening.

Have you ever awakened feeling that you had lived through an important experience, even though you could not remember its story?

Perhaps only emotions, images, or fragments remained.

This allows us to distinguish encoding, consolidation, and retrieval.

The absence of recollection does not demonstrate that an experience never occurred.

But neither does it justify claiming that a complete memory remains preserved, waiting to be accessed.

This distinction matters for spiritual experiences.

In traditions such as Candomblé, Umbanda, and Spiritism, practitioners may report different degrees of recollection during mediumistic experiences.

These accounts deserve cultural respect and careful investigation, without assuming identical mechanisms across traditions or equating trance with REM sleep.

Can Feelings Open New Possibilities?

Imagine someone awakening from a dream and remembering only an emotion.

Later, a song evokes familiarity.

Perhaps another memory emerges.

Perhaps the person develops a new interpretation.

We need to distinguish recollection from reconstruction.

But we can ask whether emotional, respiratory, and attentional changes influence the accessibility of certain experiences.

In our Movement Completion hypothesis, we investigate how mobilization, perception, feeling, intention, gesture, feedback, and choice participate in transitions.

Not every mobilization must continue as muscular movement.

Sometimes its transformation occurs in the very way we feel and understand.

Perhaps a memory no longer provokes fear.

Perhaps an experience acquires new meaning.

Some people may experience such transformations as insights, transcendence, or miracles.

Science can investigate their mechanisms without determining their spiritual significance in advance.

How Could We Investigate the Relational Connectomic Reserve?

We can begin by comparing different states within the same Body-Territory.

During wakefulness, we investigate character imagination, inner dialogue, memory, and individual decision-making.

During sleep, we use polysomnography, EEG, eye-movement recordings, and muscle recordings to identify REM, NREM, and possible episodes of lucidity.

After scheduled awakenings, we collect immediate dream reports.

We then investigate recall, emotion, recognition, and cognitive flexibility.

A second stage includes real interactions among participants, using EEG, fNIRS, ECG, heart rate variability, and respiration.

We must control for shared stimuli, movements, speech, and individual differences.

The question would not simply be whether brains synchronize.

It would be whether the ability to reorganize perspectives within One is related to the ability to construct new possibilities through reciprocal encounters.

Demonstrating the involvement of reserve anatomical connections would require structural methods and additional evidence.

Our hypothesis must remain open to being disproved.

From One to the Jiwasa-State

Chilean neuroscientist Francisco Varela proposed bringing rigorous descriptions of conscious experience closer to neuroscientific measurements.

This perspective helps us recognize that a brain signal alone does not reveal the meaning of an experience.

We need to listen to the person who lived it.

And we also need to investigate what their account cannot establish.

In Science, this attitude creates room for new hypotheses.

In Religion, it allows spiritual experiences to be respected without imposing a universal interpretation.

In Politics, it raises a question about participation: how can we build institutions that welcome different perspectives without allowing one of them to monopolize every possibility?

The Jiwasa-State remains our hypothesis of democratic organization constituted by indivisible Body-Territories.

But now we recognize something fundamental.

The collective may begin within One.

Dreaming presents this possibility as an experience.

Metacognition offers ways to investigate it.

Egregore preserves its spiritual dimension.

And the Relational Connectomic Reserve asks whether certain conditions can expand functional possibilities that remain poorly understood.

Before finishing, remember your last dream.

How many characters existed within it?

How many emotions did you experience?

How much could you remember?

Perhaps we will not find a connection waiting for a We.

Perhaps we will discover new ways to investigate what a single Body-Territory can already experience.

And our question remains:

If we can Be Many within One, which neural, emotional, and metacognitive possibilities become accessible when we begin to recognize, reorganize, and share that multiplicity?

Annotated References

Lent, Roberto; Tovar-Moll, Fernanda; Szczupak, Diego (2026). The secret connections of the brain: a connectomic reserve for neuroplasticity?. Brain, 149(7), 2273–2285.

Presents the Brazilian Connectomic Reserve hypothesis, based on the possibility that persistent anatomical projections contribute to neuroplasticity. It does not demonstrate a reserve specific to REM sleep.

Demirel, Çağatay; Gott, Jarrod; Appel, Kristoffer; Mota-Rolim, Sérgio; Ribeiro, Sidarta; et al. (2025). Electrophysiological Correlates of Lucid Dreaming: Sensor and Source Level Signatures. The Journal of Neuroscience, 45(20).

A multicenter investigation involving Brazilian researchers that identified differences in functional connectivity and neural activity associated with lucid dreaming.

Almeida-Filho, Daniel G.; Queiroz, Claudio M.; Ribeiro, Sidarta (2018). Memory corticalization triggered by REM sleep: mechanisms of cellular and systems consolidation. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 75, 3715–3740.

A review by researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte examining plasticity, memory, and circuit reorganization during REM sleep.

Siclari, Francesca; Baird, Benjamin; Perogamvros, Lampros; et al. (2017). The neural correlates of dreaming. Nature Neuroscience, 20, 872–878.

A high-density EEG study relating posterior cortical activity patterns to the presence of dream experiences during REM and NREM sleep.

Tuominen, Jarno; Stenberg, Tuula; Revonsuo, Antti; Valli, Katja (2019). Social contents in dreams: An empirical test of the Social Simulation Theory. Consciousness and Cognition, 69, 133–145.

Investigates social interactions in dreams and provides partial support for the hypothesis that dreams simulate social experiences.

Varela, Francisco (1996). Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3(4), 330–349.

A Chilean contribution proposing the integration of rigorous first-person descriptions of conscious experience with neuroscientific investigation.

Seligman, Rebecca (2005). Distress, Dissociation, and Embodied Experience: Reconsidering the Pathways to Mediumship and Mental Health. Ethos, 33(1), 71–99.

An ethnographic study conducted in Salvador, Brazil, examining mediumship in Candomblé through embodied experiences, learning, and sociocultural context.

Cionek, Jackson. Religare — Full Religiosity in a Democratic, Secular State Governed by the Rule of Law.

An original philosophical and spiritual work developing the concepts of CRIAturas, the I Am Room, and Egregore. These concepts are explored without assuming automatic equivalence with established neuroscientific constructs.

BrainLatam (2026). Completude do Movimento — Movement Completion.

Introduces the original hypothesis concerning mobilization, perception, feedback, and the transformation of possibilities for action.

Clarify the hypothesis’s scientific boundaries

BrainLatam | W44/2026 · Consciousness, REM Sleep, Egregore, Metacognition, and Neuroplasticity