Freezing of Gait and the Loss of the Body’s Own Quorum
When the body stops trusting the next step

Reference article
Sensory integration deficits in Parkinson’s disease with freezing of gait: cortical network dynamics and paradoxical dopaminergic modulation. Journal of Neurology, 2025. 

When walking becomes a negotiation

Freezing of Gait (FOG) is that terrifying moment when the legs know they should move, the command has already left the mind, but the step simply does not happen. People with Parkinson’s describe it as the feet being “glued to the floor,” even in a corridor they have walked a thousand times before.

In this article, the authors show that FOG is not just a motor failure, but a breakdown in how the body integrates sensory information and organizes its own internal “vote” about where and how to move. 

For our decolonial neuroscience vocabulary, this is the moment when the Body-Territory loses its quorum: the tissues and networks that usually agree on “we can go” stop reaching consensus about the next step.

Quorum of the Body-Territory: when sensing, planning and acting must agree

In a healthy walker, every step is a human Quorum Sensing event:

• proprioception (joints, muscles, soles of the feet),
  
  

• vision (narrow doors, slopes, obstacles),
  
  

• vestibular signals (gravity, acceleration),
  
  

• and cortical networks (SMA, M1, S1, SAC, PFC, FEF)
  
  

all converge to form a fast, embodied “yes, we move now.”

The Mente Damasiana feels this as an almost continuous flow: body, environment and intention are synchronized, and the step emerges without conscious calculation. The Body-Territory trusts itself.

The Journal of Neurology study shows that in Parkinson’s with FOG, this quorum is fragile. When walking conditions become more complex—foam, narrow gates, slopes—the system that should re-weight sensory inputs and reconfigure connectivity fails to adapt in a flexible way. 

What the fNIRS data reveal: hyperconnectivity without true adaptation

The authors used wearable fNIRS while three groups walked:

• healthy controls,
  
  

• people with Parkinson’s without FOG (PD-nFOG),
  
  

• people with Parkinson’s with FOG (PD-FOG),
  
  

across four ecological tasks: flat ground, foam, narrow gate and slope. 

Some key patterns:

• All PD participants walked more slowly than controls, and PD-FOG walked slower than PD-nFOG.
  
  

• At the cortical level, PD participants showed sensorimotor hyperactivation and hyperconnectivity, especially between somatosensory, motor, association and prefrontal regions during challenging conditions.
  
  

• PD-nFOG still managed some adaptive modulation: connectivity changed with task difficulty, as if the brain were reconfiguring to cope.
  
  

• PD-FOG showed hyperconnectivity without adaptive modulation – networks were “over-connected” but not flexibly reorganizing as conditions changed.
  
  

In our language, the Body-Territory of PD-FOG is noisy but not intelligent: many channels are talking at once, but they are not converging to a stable quorum about the next step.

Dopamine as a double-edged vote

The study also compared OFF- and ON-medication states. Dopaminergic medication:

• improved gait speed,
  
  

• partially reduced freezing episodes and their duration in some conditions,
  
  

• but produced complex, sometimes paradoxical changes in cortical activation and connectivity.
  
  

In PD-FOG, medication often suppressed activation in S1 and M1 during the most challenging sensory tasks and altered fronto-parietal connectivity in ways that do not always restore “healthy-like” patterns. The drug helps some aspects of performance, but does not fully rebuild the lost sensory integration and flexible network reconfiguration.

From a Tensional Selves perspective, dopamine can strengthen certain habitual “eus” (automatized motor programs) while still leaving the sensory–cognitive quorum unstable. The body may move faster, but it has not fully recovered its confidence in where and how to move.

Freezing as the collapse of an internal democratic process

If we describe each functional network as a “voting bloc” inside the Body-Territory, FOG is what happens when:

• sensory blocs (S1, SAC, visual/proprioceptive integration)
  
  

• motor blocs (SMA, M1)
  
  

• and supervisory blocs (PFC, FEF)
  
  

fail to reach a dynamic agreement under stress.

In PD-nFOG, the system still recalibrates: connectivity shifts as tasks become more difficult, a sign that the internal democracy of the body is alive.

In PD-FOG, this recalibration is missing. The data show:

• more rigid connectivity patterns,
  
  

• exaggerated coupling between sensory and motor areas,
  
  

• and reduced task-dependent modulation.
  
  

The result: the Mente Damasiana receives contradictory information from its own Body-Territory. Instead of a clear “go,” the quorum fractures – and the safest solution, from the nervous system’s point of view, is to stop.

Toward a decolonial rehabilitation of gait

This work suggests several practical directions that resonate with our Zone 1–2–3 and Quorum Sensing Humano framework:

• From pure strength to sensory democracy
  Balance and gait training should explicitly challenge sensory integration (foam, narrow spaces, slopes) while monitoring cortical adaptation, not just kinematics.
  
  

• Using fNIRS as a metabolic barometer of trust
  Portable fNIRS during walking can help us see when networks enter a more flexible, Zone-2-like regime—where connectivity changes with task demands—versus when they remain rigid and hyperconnected.
  
  

• Rebuilding the Body-Territory’s quorum
  Interventions could be framed as helping the Body-Territory re-learn how to listen to its own tissues: vision stepping back a little, proprioception and vestibular inputs recovering their vote, and prefrontal control not overloading the system in every step.
  
  

• Rethinking medication as one voice among many
  Dopamine becomes one regulator in a broader ecosystem of sensory and cortical adaptations, rather than the sole key to gait.
  
  

In short, this article shows that Freezing of Gait is not just “legs that don’t obey,” but a loss of internal consensus in the Body-Territory. For Parkinson’s care in Latin America, it calls us to design therapies and technologies that restore not only movement, but the metabolic confidence of taking the next step.

When Two Brains Receive the Same World - Cooperation, synchrony, and the shared rhythm of attention

Embodied Singing -Voice, interoception, and Body-Territory in vocal expertise

Pleasant Odors and the Breath that Organizes Us - How smell organizes brain–body coupling

Architecture That Thinks With Me - Turning corners and the attentional cost of built environments

Auditory Approach Bias From Birth - How newborns and adults code the desire to listen

Beta Waves and the Moment I Truly Decide - The prefrontal cortex as the space where "feeling" becomes "choosing"

How My Brain Encodes Voice in Midlife - F0, listening effort, and the vitality of human hearing

Learning Beside Another Brain - Hyperscanning and the pedagogy of co-presence

Reproducibility in fNIRS - When can I trust the hemodynamic curve I see?

HRfunc and the True Shape of the Hemodynamic Response - Why every brain breathes light in its own way

Mixed Reality and Decision-Making - How the brain evaluates prototypes and hybrid worlds

Intense Exercise and the Awakening of Zone 2 - The hemodynamics of effort and the body that generates intelligence

Buttoning a Shirt - Everyday actions as windows into attention, gesture, and consciousness

Depression, tDCS, and the Prefrontal Cortex - Reigniting silent circuits

Designing fNIRS Studies in Real-World Environments - Why science must step outside the laboratory to exist

Transformers and Virtual Short-Channels - AI cleaning brain signals and retelling hemodynamics

Mental Fatigue and Performance - When the head gives up before the body

Cold Water and the Brain - Oxygenation, cold, and the consciousness of the limit

Walking After Stroke - Cognitive–motor interference in everyday life

Balance and the Cerebellum in Parkinson’s Disease - Movement, tensions, and reorganization of the Body-Territory

Freezing of Gait and the Loss of the Body’s Own Quorum - When the body stops trusting the next step

Children With Cochlear Implants - Learning to hear through the brain, not just the device

Emotional Processing in Children With Oppositional Behavior - Regulation, conflict, and the birth of Tensional Selves

Mild Cognitive Impairment - Early hemodynamic signs and presence in the world

Pain, Apathy, and Depression in Dementia - When feeling and thinking stop walking together

Cognitive Load - How much does fNIRS really feel my mental effort?

The Brain in Daily Life -Assisted horsemanship, sport, and embodied enjoyment

Linguistic Jiwasa - When language thinks the world

Dialogical Multiplication and Indigenous Psychology - How to let psychology listen without erasing the Other

The Feeling and Knowing Taá of Christmas 

Republican Capitalism of Spirits without Bodies

NIRS fNIRS EEG ERP Multimodal NIRS-EEG

#Decolonial
#Neuroscience
#NIRSfNIRS
#Multimodal
#NIRSEEG
#Jiwasa
#Taa
#CBDCdeVarejo
#DREX
#DREXcidadão