Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self

The brain functions as a prediction machine, a view recently revived by Bayesian brain and predictive coding theories. While this perspective has mainly been applied to external senses like vision and action, this work extends it to interoception—the perception of internal body states. The 'interoceptive inference' model proposes that subjective feelings and emotions arise from the brain's active inference about the causes of internal bodily signals. This approach generalizes appraisal theories, which hold that emotions result from cognitive evaluations of physiological changes. It also provides new insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying body ownership and conscious selfhood, both in health and neuropsychiatric conditions.

Study at a glance

Abstract

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.