Neural Recurrence Redesigns the Visual Space of the Brain
Neural Recurrence Redesigns the Visual Space of the Brain
Xie, S., Singer, J., Yilmaz, B., Kaiser, D., & Cichy, R. M. (2025).
Recurrence affects the geometry of visual representations across the ventral visual stream in the human brain.
PLoS Biology, 23(8), e3003354.
First-Person Consciousness Brain Bee Ideas
Close your eyes and recall an image from childhood — a color, a face, a horizon.
Now open them slowly and notice what changes.
What we call “seeing” is not merely capturing light; it is reorganizing the body to receive the world.
To see is to touch with the brain.
And that touch is not linear — it is recursive, an oscillation between sensation, memory, and meaning.
In First-Person Consciousness, perception is an act of belonging: the body remakes itself in the act of seeing.
The study by Xie et al. (2025) elegantly demonstrates what many Indigenous traditions already knew poetically — the gaze is circular, not hierarchical.
The brain sees the world and sees itself seeing the world, in a continuous circuit of Fruição.
The Study
Xie et al. (2025) investigated how neural recurrence — the feedback of information between visual areas — reshapes the geometry of representations in the ventral visual stream.
Using multivariate decoding techniques on EEG and fMRI data, they demonstrated that visual perception is not a one-way feedforward process from the retina to the cortex, but a dynamic cycle of refinement.
These recurrent exchanges between lower and higher regions reorganize the neural space of vision: patterns of activity become progressively more distinct, precise, and semantically rich over time.
In simple terms, the brain reconstructs what it sees as it sees it.
Perception, therefore, is not a state — it is an event in time.
To see is a verb.
Apus — Extended Proprioception
In the Amerindian worldview that inspires the concept of Apus, the body does not end at the skin — it extends inward and outward, like a living mountain.
Extended Proprioception is the ability to feel oneself in form and distance, to inhabit the environment as an expansion of one’s own body.
The neural recurrence described by Xie et al. is the physiological expression of that same principle.
Visual areas do not merely “see objects”; they integrate position, memory, and context.
The gaze becomes proprioceptive: the brain moves within the space it perceives.
This is why, when we contemplate a landscape, the body seems to expand — the gaze builds territory.
The space we perceive is also the space where we exist.
Fruição and the Temporal Dimension of Vision
In the state of Fruição, time ceases to be sequence and becomes presence.
The fruitional gaze does not seek; it dwells.
Xie and colleagues revealed that visual networks remain active even after the stimulus disappears, as if the brain refused to end the experience.
This rhythmic persistence is the root of art, contemplation, and spirituality — the prolongation of perception beyond the instant.
To see is not to capture; it is to let the seen resonate.
Neural recurrence, then, is the biological basis of what I call the inner time of consciousness — an architecture that does not measure time but feels it.
It is where affective memory is born: not as recollection, but as re-experience.
The Damasian Mind and the Body-Territory
In the Damasian Mind, vision is embodied.
Seeing involves heartbeat, breathing, and posture.
The findings of Xie et al. reinforce this unity, showing that visual representations are refined through interoceptive and contextual feedback.
When the brain sees, it metabolically adjusts to what it perceives.
Each observed form subtly reorganizes muscle tone, blood flow, and attention.
To see is an act of existential self-regulation — a way of staying alive within one’s environment.
The Body-Territory concept emerges here with full clarity: the space we see is the space in which we are being.
The geometry of vision is, in truth, the geometry of being.
Evidence and Implications
Xie et al. (2025) demonstrated empirically that:
Neural recurrence increases the geometric separability of visual representations, allowing for more precise, context-dependent perception;
This recurrence occurs within rapid temporal windows (100–300 ms), revealing that perception is already prediction;
Recurrent neural network models more accurately mirror brain organization than classic feedforward networks.
These findings imply that the brain does not process images — it constructs worlds.
With every loop of recurrence, what is seen is seen anew, infused with meaning.
The Western epistemology of vision is hierarchical: an observer, an object, and a neutral distance between them.
Contemporary neuroscience — and this study in particular — begins to dismantle this colonial architecture of the gaze.
By revealing that seeing is recursive and embodied, Xie et al. invite us to understand the gaze not as domination, but as relation.
Vision ceases to be an act of control and becomes an act of communion.
Thus, Apus — as the body’s extension through space — and neural recurrence — as the brain’s reflection upon its own perception — become two expressions of the same wisdom:
to see is to participate.
EEG–fNIRS and the Space of Perception
Within the context of SfN 2025, this study has key applications:
Dynamic perception and visual feedback studies using EEG–fNIRS hyperscanning;
Recursive attention models exploring embodied Fruição;
Spatiotemporal connectome mapping in art, virtual reality, and aesthetic cognition.
Measuring neural recurrence is also measuring the depth of feeling.
EEG records the rhythm of light; fNIRS captures the warmth of blood that illuminates the gaze.
Together, they reveal the body watching itself alive.
Conclusion
The work of Xie et al. (2025) reminds us that seeing is a circular act of consciousness.
The gaze moves outward and returns, redrawing itself each time — a pulse between inside and outside.
Neural recurrence is, in essence, the heartbeat of perception.
When the brain returns to what it has seen, it does not repeat — it deepens.
Each cycle is a learning, a miniature eternity.
To see, then, is to exist in motion.
And perhaps, in that luminous loop where light folds back upon itself, we rediscover the oldest form of Fruição:
the contemplation of the world as part of ourselves.
Keywords and SEO
EEG SfN 2025 • neural recurrence • visual perception • Apus • Fruição • Damasian Mind • body territory • cortical feedback • recursive vision • decolonial neuroscience • temporal connectome • NIRx • Brain Products
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#Decolonial #Neuroscience #SocialNeuroscience #CollectiveBrain #NeurocienciaDecolonial
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#AmerindianKnowledge #BrainAndCognition #InterbrainSynchrony #Neuroplasticity
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