An Interoceptive Predictive Coding Model of Conscious Presence

By Anil K. Seth, Keisuke Suzuki, Hugo D. Critchley. Front. Psychology, 2011

899 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We describe a theoretical model of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying conscious presence and its disturbances. The model is based on interoceptive prediction error and is informed by predictive models of agency, general models of hierarchical predictive coding and dopaminergic signaling in cortex, the role of the anterior insular cortex (AIC) in interoception and emotion, and cognitive neuroscience evidence from studies of virtual reality and of psychiatric disorders of presence, specifically depersonalization/derealization disorder. The model associates presence with successful suppression by top-down predictions of informative interoceptive signals evoked by autonomic control signals and, indirectly, by visceral responses to afferent sensory signals. The model connects presence to agency by allowing that predicted interoceptive signals will depend on whether afferent sensory signals are determined, by a parallel predictive-coding mechanism, to be self-generated or externally caused. Anatomically, we identify the AIC as the likely locus of key neural comparator mechanisms. Our model integrates a broad range of previously disparate evidence, makes predictions for conjoint manipulations of agency and presence, offers a new view of emotion as interoceptive inference, and represents a step toward a mechanistic account of a fundamental phenomenological property of consciousness.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/24ec570e8b14fc4d5f59f212057fb1abfd85d237

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

Precise minds in uncertain worlds: predictive coding in autism. (2014, background): “Consequentially, these individuals will experience difficulties in inferring emotions from their own bodily states and expressions (Seth et al., 2012).”
Anterior Insular Cortex and Emotional Awareness (2013, positive): “…2007; Lieberman, 2007), the insular cortex has been singled out as a critical neural substrate for interoceptive and emotional awareness (Craig, 2009, 2010, 2011; Singer et al., 3372 The Journal of Comparative Neurology |Research in Systems Neuroscience 2009; Jones et al., 2010; Seth et al., 2011).”
Investigating the Phenomenological Matrix of Mindfulness-related Practices from a Neurocognitive Perspective (2015, background): “…the thalamus and brainstem (Damasio & Carvalho, 2013), instantiates, from moment-to-moment, high-order neural representation of all subjectively perceived feelings central for subjective awareness or “conscious presence” (see also Seth, Suzuki, & Critchley, 2011 for a recent mechanistic model).”
How Do Expectations Shape Perception? (2018, background): “, distance, rotation angle, time) [40,41], that is potentially located in posterior parietal cortex [42], and integration of predicted and actual interoceptive signals in insular cortex [43,44].”
From cognitivism to autopoiesis: towards a computational framework for the embodied mind (2016, background): “…or ‘interoceptive’ predictive coding (a.k.a. interoceptive inference) ranges in scope from straightforward extensions of comparator-based approaches (Seth et al. 2012), to treatments couched in dynamical systems theory, enactivism, and ecological psychology (Bruineberg and Rietveld 2014;…”
Visceral influences on brain and behavior. (2013, positive): “More persistent or profound uncoupling may destabilize established cognitive and emotional processes and fundamentally compromise self-representation (Seth et al., 2011).”
A Survey of Presence and Related Concepts (2017, background): “There is some speculation that the brain mechanisms that give rise to the sense of agency may be related to those that give rise to presence [40, 112].”
Active interoceptive inference and the emotional brain (2016, background): “Emotional disorders like alexithymia are relatively straightforward to explain in terms of atypical interoception, while more complex and heterogeneous constructs like anxiety have been considered in terms of interoceptive prediction error for more than a decade (87, 104) (105).”
The impact of perception and presence on emotional reactions: a review of research in virtual reality (2015, methodology): “Further, to fully understand presence in VR and its unique characteristics, the investigation of presence in reality, e.g., during in vivo exposure as compared to VR exposure, appears vital (Seth et al., 2012).”