Mixed Reality and Decision-Making

How the brain evaluates prototypes and hybrid worlds
(First-Person Consciousness • Decolonial Neuroscience • Brain Bee • The Taá of Feeling and Knowing)

The Feeling-and-Knowing Taá — in a hybrid world

I put on the mixed-reality headset and the room changes.
Part of what I see is “real”: table, chair, my own hands.
Part of what I see is “virtual”: a prototype interface floating in front of me, options, colours, trajectories.

My body doesn’t wait for a theory of mixed reality to start reacting.
My neck inclines a little.
My breathing tightens when the scene feels too crowded.
My hand hesitates before “touching” a virtual button that doesn’t exist in the material world, mas já existe no meu corpo.

Before any formal decision, there is Taá:

I feel the prototype before I judge it.

Mixed reality is exactly this fracture:

• one foot in physical space,
  
  

• one foot in a digital overlay,
  
  

• and my nervous system trying to keep both worlds coherent enough for action.
  
  

A recent 2025 study in Frontiers in Robotics and AI uses fNIRS to measure how my prefrontal cortex and related regions respond while I explore mixed-reality prototypes and make decisions about them — accept, reject, adjust, choose.
I’ll refer to it here as:

the 2025 fNIRS mixed-reality decision-making study
(search: “2025 fNIRS mixed reality decision making Frontiers Robotics AI 1695169”)

The question is simple and powerful:

How does the brain evaluate hybrid worlds where digital and physical realities overlap — and what does that mean for how we design technology, politics and everyday life in Latin America?

As I think this, I feel myself shifting into the Olmeca avatar — one of my neuroscientific reference-avatars, that looks at the world through culture and design: how spaces, symbols and objects tell us what is allowed, what is desirable, what is possible.

A crack of decolonization inside the headset

As I move through this hybrid space, I also notice something uncomfortable:

The language of “mixed reality” is usually imported:

• headsets designed elsewhere,
  
  

• interfaces that assume WEIRD bodies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, “Democratic”),
  
  

• tasks that mirror offices in the Global North more than plazas, mercados and periferias in Latin America.
  
  

I also notice how even my words were trained to name only part of what I feel.

I realise that the very vocabulary I use to think about these experiments was colonized to reduce me:

• reduce my body to a defective machine,
  
  

• my mind to performance and productivity,
  
  

• my spirituality (Utupe, Xapiri, living memory) to superstition,
  
  

• my politics to individual consumption.
  
  

It’s one of the reasons so many neuroscientists do not dare to ask questions that might reveal what colonial science cannot name.

But when I let my body feel before I think — when Taá appears — something becomes obvious to me:

there is no separation between Neuroscience, Politics and Spirituality (Utupe, Xapiri, living memory) when I inhabit a mixed reality.
Every prototype is also a political proposal and a spiritual cut in how I can exist.

What colonizes me is not only history;
it’s the word that tells me this hybrid world is “neutral technology” instead of a new way to govern my perception and movement.

Every serious scientific discovery, when read with courage, becomes a small opening that lets me escape Zone 3 — the ideological zone where I only obey interfaces and narratives — and return my body to what it always was: living territory of possible worlds.

The scientific question: how does the brain decide inside mixed reality?

The study puts participants in a mixed-reality environment where:

• they interact with prototypes (objects, interfaces, paths, robots) that only exist partially in the physical world,
  
  

• they make decisions: which option to choose, which trajectory feels safer or more efficient, which interface is more usable or trustworthy,
  
  

• their brain activity is measured with fNIRS (sometimes combined with motion tracking or other sensors).
  
  

The central question:

What changes in prefrontal hemodynamics when I evaluate different prototypes in a hybrid world?
Can the brain’s oxygenation patterns tell us when a design is cognitively heavy, confusing, or more naturally aligned with the body?

Methods: fNIRS, GLM, HRF and short-channels in a moving, hybrid world

From a Brain Bee perspective, the methods are a beautiful example of neuroergonomics:

• fNIRS over frontal and parietal areas
  
  

• Sensors (sources and detectors) placed mainly over prefrontal and parietal regions,
  
  

• Measuring changes in O₂-Hb and HHb while people interact with MR content.
  
  

• GLM (General Linear Model)
  
  

• Each design condition or decision phase is modelled as a regressor,
  
  

• The GLM estimates beta values that show how strongly each condition modulates hemodynamics.
  
  

• HRF modelling
  
  

• The Hemodynamic Response Function is adjusted to capture the timing of responses in this more ecological, moving context,
  
  

• Sometimes HRF parameters are allowed to vary to respect individual physiological differences.
  
  

• Short-channels
  
  

• Extra optodes that record superficial blood flow (scalp, skin),
  
  

• Used as regressors to remove systemic noise (heart, respiration, extracortical changes) from the cortical signal.
  
  

• ICA / PCA
  
  

• Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) help separate physiological noise and motion artifacts from true neural components,
  
  

• Crucial when people are moving their heads and bodies in MR scenarios.
  
  

The message for young researchers is clear:

It is possible to use serious fNIRS analysis outside the classic lab, in hybrid realities — as long as we respect GLM, HRF, short-channels and robust pre-processing.

Main findings: some hybrid worlds cost more than others

The results converge on a simple but profound insight:

• Different prototype designs in mixed reality lead to different patterns of prefrontal activation.
  
  

• Some MR layouts and interaction logics:
  
  

• increase dorsolateral prefrontal oxygenation,
  
  

• are associated with higher subjective mental load,
  
  

• and slower, more effortful decisions.
  
  

• Other prototypes:
  
  

• produce smaller or more efficient hemodynamic responses,
  
  

• are experienced as more intuitive,
  
  

• and support faster, more confident decisions.
  
  

In other words:

the brain is already telling us which hybrid worlds are oppressive and which ones are metabolically friendly.

This is where I clearly feel the Math/Hep avatar in the background:
the one that sees how energy, effort and statistical patterns reveal the hidden tensions in design.

Reading the results with our concepts

Mente Damasiana & mixed reality

In a Damasian mind, consciousness is the integration of interoception + proprioception.
Mixed reality creates a new kind of tension:

• my proprioception tracks the physical room,
  
  

• my interoception responds to virtual threats, affordances and promises.
  
  

If a prototype forces my body into chronic contradiction — eyes in one world, feet in another — this appears as sustained prefrontal overload in the fNIRS data.

Quorum Sensing Humano (QSH)

In a shared MR environment, groups can find or lose quorum quickly:

• some designs support collective sense-making,
  
  

• others fragment perception, each person lost in their own overlay.
  
  

Future studies could hyperscan multiple brains in the same MR scene, measuring when a design promotes collective Zone 2 instead of isolated Zone 3.

Eus Tensionais and Zones 1/2/3

Every prototype calls certain Eus Tensionais:

• a fast, reactive “gaming” self (Zone 1),
  
  

• a curious, open, creative self (Zone 2),
  
  

• or a controlled, anxious, surveilled self (Zone 3).
  
  

The hemodynamic signature of each mode can be tracked:

• clean, flexible HRF in Zone 2,
  
  

• compressed, over-activated patterns in Zone 3.
  
  

A decolonial MR design should invite Zone 2, not trap users in perpetual Zone 3 vigilance.

DANA and design

DANA — DNA intelligence — reminds us:

biological systems resist designs that violate our basic rhythms.

The “best” prototype is not the one that sells more;
it is the one that allows the organism to remain metabolically coherent.

A Latin American artistic echo

As I think about mixed reality, I can’t avoid remembering Hélio Oiticica and his penetrables, or Lygia Clark and her relational objects:

• they were already doing “mixed reality” without headsets,
  
  

• letting bodies decide paths, meanings and sensations through movement and touch,
  
  

• proposing an art where the viewer is co-creator, not just consumer.
  
  

Reading this 2025 fNIRS study through their legacy, I feel a clear invitation:

Our MR designs in Latin America could be more Oiticica and less Silicon Valley:
less control, more co-creation;
less data extraction, more shared Taá.

Normative implications for LATAM

• Education: MR should not be just a gamified classroom imported from the North; it can be a way to rehearse futures from our own territories.
  
  

• Urban policy: MR used in planning should measure not only “efficiency” but hemodynamic comfort and Zone 2 potential for diverse bodies.
  
  

• Neuro-rights: Prefrontal hemodynamics in MR is not just “usability data”; it is a metabolic map of how much a system is controlling us.
  
  

Search keywords (for the original paper)

“2025 fNIRS mixed reality decision making prototypes prefrontal hemodynamics Frontiers Robotics AI 1695169 GLM HRF short-channels ICA PCA neuroergonomics”