Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self

• Published in: Trends in cognitive sciences Vol. 17; no. 11; pp. 565 - 573
• Main Author: Seth, Anil K.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2013; Elsevier
• Subjects: active inference; Affectivity. Emotion; Awareness - physiology; Bayes Theorem; Biological and medical sciences; Brain; Cognition - physiology; emotion; Emotions - physiology; experience of body ownership; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; interoception; Models, Psychological; Neurology; Perception - physiology; Personality. Affectivity; predictive coding; Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; rubber hand illusion; interoception; emotion; active inference; rubber hand illusion; predictive coding; experience of body ownership; Human; Affect affectivity; Interoception; Prediction; Perception; Inference; Cognition; Emotion emotionality; Review; Self; Embodiment
• ISSN: 1364-6613; 1879-307X; 1879-307X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.09.007

•A new view of emotion as active inference on the causes of interoceptive signals.•Extension of appraisal emotion theories to a contemporary inferential framework.•A unified predictive model of emotion and experience of body ownership.•Interpretation of neuropsychiatric conditions as disordered interoceptive inference.•How predictive integration of interoceptive and exteroceptive signals affects self. The concept of the brain as a prediction machine has enjoyed a resurgence in the context of the Bayesian brain and predictive coding approaches within cognitive science. To date, this perspective has been applied primarily to exteroceptive perception (e.g., vision, audition), and action. Here, I describe a predictive, inferential perspective on interoception: ‘interoceptive inference’ conceives of subjective feeling states (emotions) as arising from actively-inferred generative (predictive) models of the causes of interoceptive afferents. The model generalizes ‘appraisal’ theories that view emotions as emerging from cognitive evaluations of physiological changes, and it sheds new light on the neurocognitive mechanisms that underlie the experience of body ownership and conscious selfhood in health and in neuropsychiatric illness.