Energy Economy of the Selves
Energy Economy of the Selves
FESBE 2026, HRV, breathing, EEG, and fNIRS in the neurophysiological cost of social characters
Before talking about burnout, productivity, or mental health, we return to the body. Breathing. Jaw. Shoulders. Chest. Eyes. Hands. Posture. How many times has the body already known that it no longer wanted to sustain a character, while the mind was still trying to justify the role?
This second blog begins with a simple and deep question:
how much does it cost the body to maintain a social figure that has already lost meaning?
The preliminary program of FESBE 2026 offers a fertile field for this question. Among its topics are heart rate variability methods, biological rhythms, neurobiology of depression, cognitive changes associated with metabolic disorders, exercise-nutrient interaction in muscle mass control, and discussions on science, health, and bodily systems.
In the BrainLatam2026 language, work, family, religion, politics, aesthetics, career, and social media do not demand only thoughts. They demand bodily characters. Each social character has a breathing pattern, posture, facial expression, muscular tension, gaze, speech rhythm, and way of occupying territory.
The “professional self” breathes differently from the “family self.” The “leader self” does not inhabit the body in the same way as the “obedient self.” The “religious self,” the “political self,” the “salesperson self,” the “teacher self,” the “mother self,” the “father self,” the “accepted adolescent self,” and the “perfect-family self” are not only ideas. They are temporary neurophysiological organizations.
The BrainLatam2026 hypothesis is that many modern forms of suffering appear when memory continues to be recruited to sustain a character that the body can no longer hold in harmony.
We use memories to do, not to be. Motor, affective, cognitive, religious, family, and professional memories are recruited to sustain tasks, gestures, speeches, and roles. This is necessary in everyday life. But when the role becomes too rigid, the body enters the field of “having to be.” The person begins to represent before perceiving. They continue executing a character even when Tekoha — extended interoception — is already signaling fatigue, fear, irritation, tightness, emptiness, or loss of meaning.
This is where the Energy Economy of the Selves emerges.
Each tensional self has a cost. Some characters restore the body, increase flexibility, improve breathing, and favor Zone 2. Others drain energy, reduce autonomic variability, increase jaw tension, stiffen posture, narrow attention, and push the body toward Zone 3.
Current science helps give materiality to this reading. Recent studies associate occupational burnout with changes in executive function and cardiac markers, including HRV, suggesting that psychological exhaustion is not merely “mental tiredness,” but a body-brain reorganization under overload.
HRV, especially measures such as RMSSD, is important because it offers a window into autonomic regulation. It does not measure “soul,” “inner truth,” or “identity.” It measures physiological variations linked to flexibility in the autonomic nervous system. When the question involves stress, bodily safety, emotional flexibility, and metacognitive openness, HRV/RMSSD becomes relevant within the BrainLatam2026 logic.
Breathing is also central. Recent reviews show that voluntary slow breathing can increase vagally mediated HRV indices and modulate cardiovascular functions, reinforcing the idea that respiratory rhythm is not a detail: it is part of the physiological architecture of regulation.
But the Energy Economy of the Selves cannot stop at the heart and breathing. The brain must also be listened to.
EEG allows us to observe fast dynamics: attention, error, conflict, surprise, fatigue, vigilance states, and possible microstate changes. In a study on social characters, EEG could help identify when a person enters rigid control, excessive monitoring, or defensive automatism.
fNIRS/NIRS allows us to observe cortical hemodynamic changes, especially in the prefrontal cortex, during more ecological, social, and naturalistic tasks. Recent reviews indicate the growing use of fNIRS to investigate occupational workload and safety in real-world environments, precisely because it is portable and compatible with tasks closer to everyday life.
This is decisive for Brain Support/BrainLatam: EEG and fNIRS do not enter as technological decoration. They enter because they help us ask with greater precision:
what kind of body-brain state appears when a person must sustain a social character under pressure?
A BrainLatam2026 experimental design could compare three situations:
a neutral task;
a realistic professional task;
an intense social representation task, such as defending an image of success, authority, obedience, or family belonging.
During these tasks, we could measure EEG, fNIRS, HRV/RMSSD, breathing, jaw/trapezius EMG, GSR, posture, and speech. The goal would not be to label people, but to identify patterns: when does the body enter coherence? When does it enter overload? When is there Zone 2? When does the social character hijack the body into Zone 3?
Here the avatars enter.
Iam helps ask what regulates or dysregulates this body in first-person experience. APUS observes how environment, posture, and territory reorganize the body. Tekoha perceives the internal state: tightness, safety, fatigue, comfort, belonging, or loss of meaning. Math/Hep reminds us that the hypothesis must be testable, with one variable at a time, without turning metaphor into conclusion.
The decolonial critique appears when we ask: which social characters are demanded in Latin America? Does a young person from the urban periphery need to sustain the “strong self” to survive? Does an academic woman need to sustain the “flawless self” to be respected? Does a precarious worker need to sustain the “always available self” even under exhaustion? Does a Latin American researcher need to perform excellence within structures that often do not provide the same material conditions as major global centers?
Not every burnout is individual. Sometimes it is territory. Sometimes it is class. Sometimes it is racism. Sometimes it is gender. Sometimes it is algorithm. Sometimes it is an entire society demanding characters that are too expensive for bodies already trying simply to continue.
This is why the Energy Economy of the Selves also connects with DREX Cidadão. If part of social exhaustion comes from the permanent need to perform economic security, success, and belonging, a policy of citizen metabolism could reduce the basal pressure on the social body. In this reading, DREX Cidadão is not only income or credit: it is minimal energy so that the body does not need to live in permanent Zone 3.
The final question is not only “how can we produce more?” The BrainLatam2026 question is deeper:
which social characters are we forcing bodies to sustain — and what is the physiological cost of that?
When the body changes, the character must be allowed to change. When breathing hardens, the jaw locks, RMSSD drops, the prefrontal cortex overloads, and meaning disappears, perhaps the problem is not lack of strength. Perhaps it is excess representation.
Decolonial Neuroscience begins when we stop asking only “who are you?” and also begin asking:
how much does it cost your body to continue being that?
Recent References Supporting This Text
Pihlaja et al. (2022) — Study associating occupational burnout with executive function, cardiac physiology, and daily physical activity, suggesting HRV and wearables as possible overload biomarkers.
Laborde et al. (2022) — Systematic review and meta-analysis on voluntary slow breathing and HRV, showing effects on vagally mediated heart rate variability.
Guendelman et al. (2024) — Study on brain mechanisms related to HRV modulation during emotional regulation, connecting HRV with frontal and motor brain regions.
Gemmerich et al. (2025) — Systematic review on fNIRS applications in occupational workload studies, highlighting its potential in naturalistic environments.
Han et al. (2023) — Review on fNIRS in worker cognition and safety studies, especially in applied contexts such as construction.
Park et al. (2023) — Study using fNIRS and computational models to classify mental workload, relating prefrontal activity and cognitive performance.
Abdalhadi et al. (2024) — Systematic review on combined EEG-fNIRS approaches to study acute stress effects on decision-making.
Asgari et al. (2024) — Review on cognitive workload associated with electronic health record use and burnout in healthcare professionals, useful for understanding professional characters and techno-cognitive overload.
