What If We Never Lost It?

The cascading implications of empirical confirmation of the embodied experience → default state → neuroprotection chain

Mart Wijn

Independent Researcher

ORCID: 0009-0005-4894-972x

September 2026

Abstract

This paper explores the broad implications of a hypothetical chain: embodied experience → calibrated inner compass → right-hemisphere-leading functioning → more direct memory encoding → neuroprotection. If this chain were to be empirically confirmed, it would not touch on a single subfield but on the foundations of multiple disciplines simultaneously — from developmental neuroscience and Alzheimer’s research to education, mental healthcare, and contemplative traditions. The analysis concludes with a reflexive meta-problem: the very instrument we would use to validate the chain is itself shaped by the process the chain describes.

Keywords: default mode network, hemispheric lateralization, neuroprotection, embodied cognition, developmental neuroscience, contemplative science, Alzheimer’s prevention

This is a question worth thinking through seriously. If the full chain were to be empirically confirmed — embodied experience → calibrated inner compass → right-hemisphere-leading functioning → more direct memory encoding → neuroprotection — it would intervene on multiple levels simultaneously. What follows is an exploration of the cascading consequences across neuroscience, education, mental healthcare, contemplative traditions, and the practice of science itself. The framework builds on the functional description of the human default state (Wijn, 2026a) and the developmental-lifespan analysis of embodied calibration (Wijn, 2026b), and draws on the hemispheric model proposed by McGilchrist (2009; 2021).

1. Within neuroscience

It would fundamentally reorder the current developmental model. At present, the shift toward left-hemispheric dominance in childhood is treated as maturation — as the brain becoming “ready.” If it turns out that this shift is not maturation but the loss of a functionally superior configuration, every textbook in developmental neuroscience gets rewritten. Not a marginal correction — the foundational narrative about what normal cognitive development is would change.

Research on the default mode network would take a new direction. Instead of “how do we dampen the DMN during rumination,” the question becomes “how do we restore the original processing mode.” That is a completely different research program.

And the connection to Alzheimer’s might be the most explosive finding. If it can be demonstrated that the degree of right-hemispheric functioning and embodied memory encoding is predictive of neurodegeneration, then the entire field of Alzheimer’s research shifts from amyloid plaques and pharmacological intervention toward developmental prevention. That would redirect tens of billions in research funding.

2. Within education and child-rearing

This is where it would be hardest to land and where it would have the most impact. If the chain holds, then the current education system is not suboptimal but actively harmful — it accelerates the loss of a neural architecture that supports the entire lifespan. This is not “children should play outside more”; this is “the education system as it currently exists is a neurological risk factor.” That touches on identity, on the professional dignity of millions of teachers, on the entire structure of how we organize childhood.

The screen time debate would shift from “how much is acceptable” to “every minute during critical periods represents a measurable loss of neural calibration.” That is a different kind of conversation, with different political and economic consequences. The tech industry would for the first time be confronted with a claim that is not about attention span or sleep quality but about lifelong neurological damage.

3. Within mental healthcare

If the default state is the biological baseline, and if psychological suffering is largely the result of operating from an overwritten architecture, then the entire model of what constitutes a mental disorder changes. Depression, anxiety, rumination — these are no longer disorders to be treated, but symptoms of operating from the wrong mode. The direction of treatment shifts from symptom management to restoring the original configuration. That would impact the pharmaceutical industry, insurance systems, and the entire DSM framework.

4. Within contemplative traditions

This may be the most underestimated effect. If it is empirically confirmed that the state monks spend decades meditating toward is the biological baseline, then the entire framework of spiritual achievement collapses. That is liberating for some and threatening to an enormous infrastructure of teachers, methods, retreats, and traditions that derive their reason for existence from the difficulty of the path. This dynamic is described in more detail in the first paper of this series (Wijn, 2026a), and the resistance it generates has been experienced firsthand. With empirical confirmation, that resistance does not diminish — it grows, because something is then at stake that can no longer be dismissed as personal opinion.

5. The meta-problem

And here lies perhaps the deepest implication. If the chain holds, then the instrument with which we practice science — analytical, sequential, left-hemispheric thinking — is itself the product of the overwriting. McGilchrist (2009; 2021) has described this dynamic in detail: the left hemisphere’s tendency to construct a self-consistent world from its own abstractions, while systematically excluding the broader, contextual awareness of the right hemisphere. The method by which one would need to validate the claim has been shaped by precisely the process the claim describes. This is not an insurmountable problem; one can build measurement instruments that assess right-hemispheric activity without the researcher needing to be in the default state themselves. But it does explain why it takes so long before these kinds of questions are even posed. The system has no natural inclination to examine its own foundations.

6. What it would ultimately mean

If the full chain is confirmed, then the conclusion is not that we have discovered something new. The conclusion is that we have lost something we did not know we had, and that everything we have built — education, healthcare, culture, science — has been built from the overwritten state. Not wrong in the sense of “it doesn’t work,” but limited in a way that is invisible from the inside. This is the kind of insight that does not correct but reorders.

And that is precisely why it would be so difficult to land. Not because it is wrong, but because it asks an entire civilization to acknowledge that its operating mode is not the only one, and perhaps not the best.

References

McGilchrist, I. (2009). The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press. (New expanded edition, 2019.)

McGilchrist, I. (2021). The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva Press.

Wijn, M. (2026a). Human Default State. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22096131

Wijn, M. (2026b). The Calibrated Life: How Early Embodied Experience Shapes the Baseline for Lifelong Neurological Health. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22100806