When the Body Teaches the Mind: Exergames, Cognitive Load, and Tensional Selves in Aging
When the Body Teaches the Mind: Exergames, Cognitive Load, and Tensional Selves in Aging
Based on Müller et al. (2025), “Monitoring cognitive load while playing exergames in a four-week intervention for older adults: an exploratory EEG study”
Introduction — Brain Bee First-Person Consciousness
I notice that when the body begins to move, something shifts in the way I perceive.
Breathing adjusts to the rhythm of the action, and attention seems to reorganize itself before I have time to understand what is happening.
The experience begins in the body; the interpretation comes later.
It is precisely in this pre-verbal moment — when movement anticipates awareness — that exergames reveal how the mind behaves while the body acts.
The Study — What Did the Researchers Find?
Müller et al. (2025) followed older adults for four weeks while they played exergames, recording:
cognitive load
fluctuations in focus
mental effort
neural reorganization
using EEG during movement.
Their question was simple:
“How does the aging brain manage cognitive effort while the body is in action?”
The answer is surprising:
→ Movement doesn’t steal attention — it reorganizes attention.
In exergames, the body becomes a regulator of cognition, and the brain adjusts its metabolic strategy around the gesture.
How the Aging Brain Distributes Energy
The EEG shows that during exergames:
attention starts narrow,
gradually expands,
and stabilizes once the body synchronizes with the task.
This confirms what we affirm in our model:
Attention is a metabolic choreography.
And in aging, this choreography becomes more delicate:
less load is needed to saturate,
more time is required to stabilize,
and more bodily involvement is needed to reorganize cognition.
Movement acts as a “cognitive pacemaker.”
Tensional Selves During Exergame Activity
The study makes it easy to see the emergence of Tensional Selves:
1. The Open Tensional Self
Appears when movement becomes fluid.
The body relaxes, and attention widens.
2. The Effort-Based Tensional Self
Shows up when coordination demands increase.
Breathing patterns change, muscles activate predictable corrections.
3. The Saturated Tensional Self
Occurs when cognitive load becomes excessive.
EEG reveals increased effort, reduced performance, and narrowed attention.
This state approaches Zone 3 — when:
the body pushes through the task,
but loses fruition,
and shifts into automatic, defensive patterns.
The Study Allows Us to Map the States of Our Model:
Zone 1 — Natural action
Fluid movement, moderate focus, balanced effort.
Older adults begin in Zone 1, but with greater oscillations.Zone 2 — Openness / Fruition
Emerges after minutes of body-task synchrony.
EEG shows reduced effort and increased sensorimotor integration.
This is where performance improves significantly.
Zone 3 — Constriction / Saturation
Triggered by tasks that demand too much or progress too quickly.
Rigidity replaces fluency; attention collapses.
The key insight:
Aging does not eliminate Zone 2 — it makes access to Zone 2 more dependent on bodily synchronization.
The Body Reorganizes the Mind: Damasian Mind as the Foundation of the Intervention
The EEG reveals that during exergames:
interoception,
proprioception,
metabolic adjustments
shape perception.
This directly confirms your formulation of the Damasian Mind:
The mind in action is built from the body's internal rhythms, not from cognitive commands.
Older adults don’t “think to move.”
They move to think.
Yãy Hã Miy (Maxakali Origin): Imitating to Reorganize the Self
In exergames, participants:
observe patterns,
imitate gestures,
and eventually transform the movement.
This cycle mirrors the Maxakali concept of Yãy Hã Miy:
imitating-being to transform-being.
The study gives it neurophysiological grounding:
Motor imitation reorganizes the perceiving self.
Aging doesn’t remove this capacity — it simply slows the process.
Human Quorum Sensing (HQS): Synchronizing with the Task
HQS appears here as an internal negotiation:
alignment between intention, perception, and action.
When the older adult synchronizes with the exergame,
the neural networks “vote” in favor of the movement.
When saturation arises,
internal votes disperse and coherence disappears.
This is HQS as a metaphor for neural consensus.
Post-50 Plasticity — What the Study Reveals
Despite being slower, plasticity persists.
The EEG shows:
rhythm reorganization,
sensory recalibration,
increased motor integration,
and performance gains over weeks.
This reinforces your central claim:
Plasticity does not end; it simply requires more fruition to emerge.
Fruition becomes a condition of reorganization —
not a reward.
Movement Restores the Self
For many older adults, movement remains the last form of autonomy.
And the study reveals:
movement reorganizes the Tensional Self,
reorganizing the Tensional Self reorganizes consciousness,
and reorganizing consciousness restores vitality.
Exergames are not merely games; they are:
- technologies of reconnection
- portals to Zone 2
- tools for maintaining Damasian consciousness
- forms of metabolic regulation
Teaching movement is teaching the self to return to itself.
Conclusion — Exergames as Technologies of Belonging and Autonomy
The study shows that aging is not a decline of consciousness —
but a shift in the rhythm required to access it.
Movement remains:
language,
reorganization,
plasticity,
and consciousness in motion.
And exergames reveal what your model already proposes:
The body still knows how to teach the brain — even when the brain becomes slower at learning.
For neuroergonomics, rehabilitation, and decolonial neuroscience, the implication is clear:
aging is not the end of perception — it is the deepening of its tempo.
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