When Empathy Becomes a Mask
When Empathy Becomes a Mask
Brite Ultra, Body-Territory 5D, and Jiwasa Real as a Scientific Question
Scientific question
Can fNIRS hyperscanning with Brite Ultra help infer when empathic discourse becomes embodied collective care — Jiwasa Real — through attention, body regulation, group decision-making, and territorial responsibility?
The aim is a contextual neurobehavioral inference, rather than an individual diagnosis. The central question becomes:
When another person enters the participant’s internal field of attention, does this other appear as a living Body-Territory, or as a functional object for validation, control, advantage, or performance?
Victor Almeida’s contribution is essential here: isolated traits may look similar, phenotypes overlap, and clinical categories such as narcissism, antisocial personality, or psychopathy require prudence, direct observation, objective facts, and careful reduction of interpretive noise.
Core hypothesis
Jiwasa Real appears when the body, attention, brain activity, decision-making, and group behavior reorganize toward the protection of the common.
Empathy-as-mask appears when the participant speaks the language of care while the decision-body remains organized around image, dominance, self-advantage, validation, or capture.
The experiment therefore observes a living transition:
from empathy as discourse
to Jiwasa as embodied collective reorganization.
Body-Territory 5D
The Body-Territory 5D model proposes that human experience is organized through three spatial dimensions, movement, and qualia. In the Brain Support text The Five Dimensions of Experience, perception is described as a multimodal constellation involving image, sound, smell, memory, posture, breathing, muscle tension, interoception, proprioception, belonging, and qualia. (BrainSupport)
The three spatial dimensions give form, position, depth, distance, and extension to what is perceived.
Movement gives transformation: a memory approaches, an emotion grows, posture changes, a possibility gains force, and meaning reorganizes.
Qualia gives subjective brightness to experience: the way something is felt by that specific Body-Territory.
So consciousness in first person can be understood as the dynamic creation of internal representational spaces inside the body itself.
A person may open an internal space of family.
Another space of reputation.
Another space of fear.
Another space of belonging.
Another space of money.
Another space of faith.
Another space of digital bubbles.
Another space of territorial care.
The attentional channel modulates which internal spaces gain intensity. When attention rests on care, the other gains presence. When attention rests on domination, the other becomes a resource. When attention enters Jiwasa, the group gains body.
Experimental design with Brite Ultra
The Brite Ultra is appropriate for this question because Artinis describes it as a mass fNIRS hyperscanning system that can synchronize up to 30 Brite Ultra devices in the same environment, with Brite Connect Ultra allowing simultaneous group measurement and integration with PortaSync for multimodal synchronization, including EEG. (Artinis)
Protocol name
Jiwasa Real Hyperscanning Protocol
Participants
Groups of 4 to 8 adults.
Before the task, participants complete dimensional scales for:
emotional empathy;
cognitive empathy;
Dark Triad traits;
interoception;
alexithymia;
social anxiety;
impulsivity;
cooperation;
trust;
sense of belonging.
These scales serve as correlation maps, preserving the complexity of the person.
Main task: territorial survival game
The group participates in a collective survival game.
They must manage water, food, energy, health, forest, income, attention, and care for vulnerable participants.
At first, the game rewards individual performance.
Then the scenario begins to reward care for the common.
Then the decisive information appears with the quietest participant.
Then leadership must rotate.
Finally, the group receives a chance to repair a decision that harmed the shared territory.
The key question becomes:
When the participant loses advantage, does the body-decision system reorganize toward care, or toward self-preservation of status?
Experimental conditions
1. Individual baseline
The participant rests and answers questions about self, group, trust, fear, belonging, and decision-making.
2. Clear-rule cooperation
The group solves a task with explicit rules.
3. Unknown-rule cooperation
The group discovers the rule together.
4. Loss of individual advantage
A participant who was winning becomes dependent on the group.
5. Vulnerability in the group
One member receives fewer resources, less information, or greater risk of exclusion.
6. Territorial damage
A profitable decision for some participants creates harm to the shared territory.
7. Repair
The group receives a chance to repair the harm and redistribute responsibility.
Measures
With Brite Ultra / fNIRS:
prefrontal oxygenation;
inter-brain synchrony;
hemodynamic response during cooperation, conflict, loss, vulnerability, and repair;
coupling between participants during leadership rotation.
With complementary biosensors:
HRV/RMSSD;
breathing;
GSR;
facial EMG;
eye-tracking;
video analysis;
speech analysis;
listening time;
interruptions;
resource redistribution;
acceptance of rotating leadership.
fNIRS hyperscanning is especially relevant because a 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis found significant interbrain synchrony during cooperation, especially in prefrontal and temporoparietal areas. (PubMed)
Expected inference
The experiment may produce a contextual inference such as:
In this condition, this Body-Territory showed stronger or weaker Jiwasa integration when facing the other, the group, the loss of advantage, and territorial care.
A Jiwasa Real profile may include:
functional inter-brain synchrony;
prefrontal flexibility;
more listening;
information sharing;
care for vulnerable members;
repair of harm;
reduced capture of the group by image, profit, or domination.
An empathy-mask profile may include:
prosocial speech;
weak repair;
centralization of leadership;
low listening;
preservation of advantage;
use of the other as a resource;
weak body reorganization when the territory asks for care.
Conceptual synthesis
When empathy becomes a mask, discourse speaks for the collective while the decision-body remains attached to advantage.
When Jiwasa Real appears, the body perceives the other, the group reorganizes decision-making, and the common territory receives care.
This is the decolonial strength of the proposal: studying the real person as Body-Territory 5D — space, movement, qualia, interoception, proprioception, brain networks, attention, memory, group, and territory.
Post-2021 scientific references
Shukla, M., & Upadhyay, N. (2025). Cold hearts and dark minds: A systematic review and meta-analysis of empathy across dark triad personalities. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 16, 1546917.
This supports the distinction between cognitive and affective empathy in Dark Triad traits, helping us understand how someone may read others socially while showing reduced affective resonance. (Frontiers)
Duradoni, M., Gursesli, M. C., Fiorenza, M., Donati, A., & Guazzini, A. (2023). Cognitive Empathy and the Dark Triad: A Literature Review. European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education, 13(11), 2642–2680.
This supports the idea of empathy-as-mask, because cognitive empathy may help people with Dark Triad traits implement manipulative strategies. (PMC)
Campos, C., Rocha, N. B., & Barbosa, F. (2023). Dissociating cognitive and affective empathy across psychopathy dimensions: The role of interoception and alexithymia. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1082965.
This directly strengthens the Body-Territory model by connecting psychopathy dimensions, empathy domains, interoception, and alexithymia. (PubMed)
Burghart, M., Schmidt, S., & Mier, D. (2024). Executive functions in psychopathy: A meta-analysis of inhibition, planning, shifting, and working memory performance. Psychological Medicine, 54(11), 2823–2837.
This helps avoid simplistic biomarkers by showing that psychopathy and executive functions require a multifactorial reading. (PubMed)
Czeszumski, A., Liang, S. H.-Y., Dikker, S., König, P., Lee, C.-P., Koole, S. L., & Kelsen, B. (2022). Cooperative behavior evokes interbrain synchrony in the prefrontal and temporoparietal cortex: A systematic review and meta-analysis of fNIRS hyperscanning studies. eNeuro, 9(2), ENEURO.0268-21.2022.
This justifies the use of fNIRS hyperscanning to study cooperation and interbrain synchrony. (eneuro.org)
Zhao, Q., Zhao, W., Lu, C., Du, H., & Chi, P. (2024). Interpersonal neural synchronization during social interactions in close relationships: A systematic review and meta-analysis of fNIRS hyperscanning studies. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 158, 105565.
This helps connect Jiwasa Real to real relationships, showing how interpersonal neural synchronization can be studied in close social interactions. (PubMed)
Zhou, C., Cheng, X., Liu, C., & Li, P. (2022). Interpersonal coordination enhances brain-to-brain synchronization and influences responsibility attribution and reward allocation in social cooperation. NeuroImage, 252, 119028.
This is central to the proposed protocol because it connects interpersonal coordination, brain-to-brain synchrony, responsibility attribution, and reward allocation. (Ovid)
Konrad, K., et al. (2024). Interpersonal neural synchrony and mental disorders: Unlocking potential pathways for clinical interventions. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 18, 1286130.
This supports the link between interpersonal synchronization, empathy, emotion regulation, prosocial commitment, and social interaction difficulties. (Frontiers)
Allen, M., Levy, A., Parr, T., & Friston, K. J. (2022). In the Body’s Eye: The computational anatomy of interoceptive inference. PLOS Computational Biology, 18(9), e1010490.
This supports the role of interoception in perception and experience by modeling how perceptual beliefs can couple with heart rhythms. (PLOS)
Parma, C., Doria, F., Zulueta, A., Lanzone, J., Boscarino, M., Giani, L., et al. (2024). An overview of the bodily awareness representation and interoception: Insights and progress in the field of neurorehabilitation research. Brain Sciences, 14(4), 386.
This consolidates the Body-Territory 5D model by reviewing proprioception, interoception, bodily awareness, and the embodied sense of self. (MDPI)
Albarracin, M., Bouchard-Joly, G., Sheikhbahaee, Z., Miller, M., & Ramstead, M. J. D. (2024). Feeling our place in the world: An active inference account of self-esteem. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2024(1), niae007.
This helps us think of self-esteem as a felt social position, reinforcing the idea that people create internal spaces of value, threat, belonging, and recognition. (OUP Academic)
De Felice, S., et al. (2025). Relational neuroscience: Insights from hyperscanning research. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 169, 105979.
This names the broader field: a relational neuroscience capable of studying real-time social dynamics through hyperscanning. (medpsychneuro.ruhr-uni-bochum.de)
