Before Learning, a Brain Needs Food. Who Decides That?

Metabolism, Early-Life Malnutrition, Meritocracy, and State Income: From Neuroscience Research in Pernambuco to the Material Conditions of Existence of Every Body-Territory.

1. Before Thinking About Hunger, Notice Your Body

As you read these words, your brain continues to consume energy.

Even without your awareness, your organism regulates temperature, circulation, breathing, and countless activities necessary for life.

Now imagine not knowing when you will have your next meal.

Has your attention changed?

Perhaps you remembered someone. Perhaps you thought about food prices.

You do not need to respond as we expect.

We want to investigate what your experience adds to the question.

At Neurobucano - the Second Neuroscience Seminar in Pernambuco, Rubem Guedes presented research on the short- and long-term brain consequences of early-life malnutrition.

BrainLatam proposes expanding this dialogue: if nutrition participates in brain development, who organizes the material conditions that make nourishment possible?

2. Rubem Guedes: Nutrition Participates in Neural Organization

Rubem Guedes, from the Federal University of Pernambuco, has investigated relationships between nutrition and brain functioning for decades.

In 2024, Guedes and colleagues published a study examining the effects of early visual deprivation and malnutrition on cortical spreading depression in adult rats.

Cortical spreading depression is a wave of depolarization that propagates through brain tissue, allowing researchers to investigate electrophysiological properties of neural networks.

Such research helps explain how early experiences may produce functional consequences observable later in life.

However, findings from animal studies cannot directly determine a child's cognitive future.

Neural development involves nutrition, genetics, health, experiences, relationships, and environmental conditions.

Experiments reveal important mechanisms. They do not, by themselves, reveal the entirety of life.

We isolate aspects of reality to understand them, not to define the whole of Being.

3. The Damasian Mind: Hunger Does Not Happen Only in the Brain

Imagine evaluating two children exclusively through their school performance.

One achieves better results.

You might conclude that this child learned more quickly.

But do you know about each child's nutrition, sleep, safety, and learning conditions?

António and Hanna Damásio connect homeostatic feelings and consciousness with the regulation of the living organism.

At BrainLatam, our reflection on the Damasian Mind and civic responsibility extends this perspective to the Body-Territory.

Hunger involves physiological mechanisms.

But access to food also depends on income, production, distribution, and public policies.

Decolonial Neuroscience can investigate these dimensions without reducing social processes to neuronal activity or abandoning experimental precision.

4. The Island of Papers: Nobody Chose Where They Were Born

Let us return to our Island of Papers, where one thousand inhabitants created money to organize their exchanges.

Twenty generations later, some families have accumulated property, while others depend primarily on labor income.

Two children are born.

Neither decided how money would be issued, who would receive credit, or which families would inherit wealth.

Nevertheless, both begin living with the consequences of those decisions.

One encounters food security and access to essential services.

The other experiences deprivation.

Now imagine evaluating them solely by their future achievements.

This is where meritocracy requires critical examination.

Individual effort matters. But inherited opportunities, social conditions, and available resources also shape life trajectories.

We cannot transform differences in outcomes into definitive judgments about people's worth.

5. My Frustration with Lula's Governments

For decades, I voted for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, hoping for transformations capable of expanding social well-being in Brazil.

I recognize the importance of policies aimed at reducing poverty and expanding opportunities.

Yet my frustration remains with the persistence of structures that give the financial system enormous influence over our economic possibilities.

Lula's meeting with bankers during the 2002 presidential campaign became, for me, a symbol of the tension between social transformation and commitments to financial stability.

On June 26, 2024, during his third administration, Brazil's National Monetary Council established a continuous inflation target of 3%, with a tolerance band from 1.5% to 4.5%.

This target does not legally prevent the Selic policy interest rate from falling below 10%.

However, when combined with elevated inflation expectations and other macroeconomic conditions, it can contribute to maintaining restrictive interest rates.

On November 4, 2026, the Monetary Policy Committee maintained the Selic rate at 13.75% per year.

My criticism is not an argument for high inflation. Price stability also protects vulnerable families.

I question why it has been so difficult to build monetary stability alongside accessible credit, productive investment, and a broader distribution of economic opportunities.

6. Brazil as Something for the Wealthy: Who Receives the Benefits?

In Brazil as Something for the Wealthy - When the Rules Belong to Those Who Can Interpret Them, we investigate the difference between formally possessing rights and having the practical means to exercise them.

High interest rates can provide returns on certain financial assets while simultaneously making borrowing more expensive.

They are also intended to contain inflationary pressures, whose consequences can be particularly severe for families with limited means of protecting their income.

We should not assume that everyone benefits or suffers in the same way.

We need to identify who receives financial returns, who bears the costs, and which institutional alternatives exist.

The Island of Papers makes this question visible: who participates in creating, circulating, and interpreting the rules governing money?

And how do these decisions affect bodies that need food every day?

7. Body-Territory: The State Begins Before a Paycheck

Imagine a newborn child.

The child does not work, own property, or demonstrate measurable economic productivity.

Nevertheless, that child already belongs to the political community.

At BrainLatam, we propose recognizing every Body-Territory as a constitutive and indivisible unit of the Jiwasa-State.

From this conception emerges the proposal for State Income, developed through our Citizen Drex initiative.

A universal, individual, permanent, and unconditional income.

Not as wages, loans, or rewards for productivity.

But as an economic expression of belonging to the State.

This is a political and institutional proposal, not a monetary right currently established in Brazil.

Its implementation would require sustainable financing, legislation, governance, data protection, and assessments of its effects on prices, employment, and distribution.

Citizen Drex would be a possible infrastructure, distinct from the Brazilian Central Bank's official Drex project.

The Body-Territory should not have to demonstrate merit to participate economically in the State it constitutes.

8. Biome Income: No Food Begins at the Supermarket

Now follow the journey of a food product.

Before reaching your plate, it depended on soil, water, energy, biodiversity, knowledge, and labor.

How much of these relationships is fully reflected in its final price?

In When the Biome Also Participates in Decision-Making, we propose investigating Biome Income as economic recognition of ecological continuity.

Preserving water, vegetation, soil fertility, and biodiversity also sustains future possibilities.

Biome Income does not replace State Income.

One would recognize ecological and territorial contributions; the other, individual membership in the political community.

Both would require public criteria, economic evaluation, and transparent distribution mechanisms.

9. Production of Excess: Does More Production Mean More Life?

Imagine two agricultural regions.

One produces food, reduces waste, and restores its soil.

The other continuously expands extraction, while its inhabitants continue experiencing food insecurity.

Which one has expanded the conditions necessary for life?

In How Much Longer Should We Produce More? When Excess Begins to Produce Less Future, we investigate the Production of Excess.

We are not opposed to producing more food, medicine, or technology.

We ask whether increased production actually improves distribution, material sufficiency, and ecological regeneration.

FAO reports recent progress in reducing hunger across Latin America, alongside persistent inequalities and barriers to accessing healthy diets.

The challenge involves producing, distributing, and preserving the conditions that make continued production possible.

10. Before Judging Merit, We Need to Understand Conditions

Return to the two children on the Island of Papers.

Imagine both taking the same school assessment.

You know their answers.

But do you know their histories?

At BrainLatam, we distinguish:

Experiment → Result → Interpretation → Judgment → Decision.

DOING IS SCIENCE. JUDGING IS POLITICS.

Neuroscience investigates how nutrition and environment participate in development.

Economics examines resources, incentives, and distribution.

Politics determines which rights and responsibilities should guide institutions.

None of these dimensions replaces the others.

Our political frustration can become a testable question: which economic arrangements could expand food security, development, and autonomy without compromising the stability necessary for collective life?

Neurobucano contributes by investigating brain mechanisms.

BrainLatam adds the Body-Territory as a unit of experience and participation.

Perhaps you began this reading thinking of hunger solely as an individual need.

Perhaps you now recognize the relationships that make nourishment possible.

We do not need to determine your interpretation.

But we must ask: if the brain requires material conditions to learn, why should participation in those conditions depend on productivity that a child has not yet had the opportunity to develop?

State Income, Biome Income, and the Production of Excess are hypotheses open to investigation.

The commitment remains: to build knowledge and institutions capable of expanding the possibilities of Being for every Body-Territory.

Scientific, Economic, and Intellectual References

The references follow the article's conceptual development and explain the specific contribution of each work. Hyperlinks are integrated into publication titles, allowing readers to explore the research without interrupting the flow of knowledge.

1. NEUROBUCANO (2024). II Seminário de Neurociências em Pernambuco. Federal University of Pernambuco and Real Hospital Português, Recife, Brazil.

The event brought together interdisciplinary neuroscience research, including Rubem Guedes's contribution on the short- and long-term cerebral consequences of early-life malnutrition.

2. GUEDES, Rubem C. A. et al. (2024). Effects of early monocular enucleation on cortical spreading depression in well-nourished and malnourished adult rats. Experimental Brain Research, 242, 2241–2247.

This research from Pernambuco investigates how nutritional conditions and early sensory experiences may influence electrophysiological properties of the adult brain, contributing to our understanding of plasticity and developmental vulnerability.

3. DAMASIO, Antonio; DAMASIO, Hanna (2024). Homeostatic Feelings and the Emergence of Consciousness. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

The authors connect homeostatic feelings, bodily regulation, and consciousness, providing a neurobiological foundation for understanding the mind as a process of the living organism.

4. BRAINLATAM (2025). Mente Damasiana e a Origem Neural da Responsabilidade Cívica - Soberania e Defesa Nacional.

Develops our interpretation of how bodily experiences involving hunger, safety, care, and belonging may inform discussions about social responsibility and citizenship.

5. BRAINLATAM (2026). A Ilha dos Papéis - Quem recebeu o direito de criar o dinheiro?.

This thought experiment illustrates how monetary creation, property, and credit rules can produce intergenerational economic differences, allowing us to question relationships between opportunity and individual merit.

6. CENTRAL BANK OF BRAZIL (2024). CMN Resolution No. 5,141 of June 26, 2024.

Establishes Brazil's continuous inflation target of 3%, with a tolerance margin of 1.5 percentage points in either direction, effective from January 2025. This decision provides the institutional foundation for our discussion of monetary policy.

7. CENTRAL BANK OF BRAZIL (2026). Copom Reduces the Selic Rate to 13.75% - September 2026; B3 (2026), Copom Interrupts Rate Cuts and Maintains the Selic at 13.75% - November 2026.

These publications document the restrictive monetary policy context and the November 4 decision to maintain the Selic at 13.75%, providing verifiable evidence for discussing borrowing costs and price stability.

8. BRAINLATAM (2026). O Brasil como Coisa de Ricos - Quando as regras pertencem a quem pode interpretá-las.

Investigates how economic inequality may create unequal capacities to understand, influence, and exercise rights, expanding the critique of meritocracy and institutional concentration of power.

9. FAO; IFAD; PAHO; UNICEF; WFP (2025/2026). Latin America and the Caribbean - Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2025.

This regional overview documents progress in reducing hunger while identifying persistent food insecurity, inequality, and barriers to accessing healthy diets, reinforcing the economic and territorial dimensions of nutrition.

10. FURTADO, Celso (1959). Formação econômica do Brasil (The Economic Formation of Brazil).

The Brazilian economist examines the historical origins of productive structures, regional inequalities, and economic concentration, helping explain why material opportunities are not distributed exclusively through individual effort.

11. BRAINLATAM (2026). Drex Cidadão - Quem recebe o dividendo dos dados? Do Corpo-Território ao Rendimento-Estado.

Proposes State Income as universal and unconditional economic participation rooted in the recognition of each Body-Territory as a constitutive unit of the State, distinguishing this proposed right from wages or productivity-based remuneration.

12. BRAINLATAM (2026). Quando o Bioma também entra na decisão.

Develops Biome Income as a proposal for economically recognizing ecological functions and territorial regeneration, linking development to the environmental conditions sustaining every Body-Territory.

13. BRAINLATAM (2026). Produzir mais até quando? Quando o excesso começa a produzir menos futuro.

Introduces the Production of Excess as a framework for evaluating productive expansion through material sufficiency, added value, economic distribution, and ecological pressures.

BRAINLATAM | NEUROBUCANO | W46/2026 | BLOG 04/08