An Interoceptive Predictive Coding Model of Conscious Presence

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 cor...

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Published in:Frontiers in psychology Vol. 2; p. 395
Main Authors: Seth, Anil K., Suzuki, Keisuke, Critchley, Hugo D.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 01.01.2012
Frontiers Media S.A
Subjects:
agency
Consciousness
depersonalization disorder
predictive coding
presence
Psychology
virtual reality
virtual reality
interoception
agency
consciousness
predictive coding
depersonalization disorder
insular cortex
presence
ISSN:1664-1078, 1664-1078
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary: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.
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Reviewed by: Ryota Kanai, University College London, UK; Chris Frith, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London, UK
Edited by: Morten Overgaard, Aalborg University, Denmark
This article was submitted to Frontiers in Consciousness Research, a specialty of Frontiers in Psychology.
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00395