Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
October 11, 2016
Anil K. Seth, Karl Friston
936 citations
Interoception—the perception of internal bodily states—is being reconceptualized through the lens of hierarchical inference in the brain. Bodily states are regulated by autonomic reflexes enslaved by descending predictions from deep generative models of our internal and external environment. This re-conceptualization, termed interoceptive inference, illuminates issues in cognitive and clinical neuroscience, including experiences of selfhood and emotion. The review contextualizes interoception in active Bayesian inference, highlighting its enactivist aspects, the role of uncertainty or precision in neuromodulation, implications for the functional anatomy of the emotional brain, and the role of interoception in shaping a sense of embodied self and feelings. Links are drawn between homeostasis, allostasis, cybernetic predictive control, and predictive processing. The explanatory scope ranges from autism and depression to consciousness.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
November 29, 1998
M. E. Raichle
130 citations
A brain-imaging strategy isolates neural correlates of consciousness by examining a cognitive skill—generating verbs for visually presented nouns—before and after practice. Marked qualitative differences in neural circuitry appear between naive and practised states, including both increases and decreases from baseline brain activity.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
March 17, 2014
Randolph Blake, Jan Brascamp, David J. Heeger
102 citations
Binocular rivalry, a phenomenon where perception alternates between two incompatible images presented to each eye, has been used to study the neural correlates of conscious vision. This essay critically examines four key questions about its usefulness: what comparison condition is appropriate, how to separate abolished awareness from inattention, whether findings from rivalry generalize to other perceptual phenomena, and whether neural activity linked to rivalry truly constitutes a neural correlate of consciousness. The authors arrive at skeptical answers to these questions but suggest that a more nuanced use of binocular rivalry can still provide insights into neural dynamics and components of consciousness, including those involved in perceptual decision-making.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
October 21, 2024
Stefanie Enriquez‐geppert, Jaroslav Krc, Fiachra O'Higgins et al.
5 citations
Executive function deficits, common in psychiatric disorders, may be linked to diminished neural plasticity. A pioneering study tested the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of combining psilocybin with frontal-midline theta neurofeedback (NF) to improve executive functions. Thirty-seven participants were randomized into an experimental group (18) receiving three microdose sessions followed by three psilocybin-assisted NF sessions, and a passive control group (19). NF learning showed a statistical trend for increased frontal-midline theta with a large effect size.