scholarly journals Pre-stimulus fluctuations in heart-synchronised neural activity predict subsequent self-association with affective stimuli

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sucharit Katyal
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Affective Arousal ◽  
Affective Stimuli ◽  
Self Association ◽  
Bodily State ◽  
Cardiac Pulse ◽  
Bodily States

We frequently associate ourselves with certain affective attributes (e.g., I am joyful, I am lazy, etc.) and not others. However, little is understood about how such self-associations come about. Interoceptive predictive theories propose that a sense of self, especially in an affective context, results from the brain making inferences about internal bodily states. A key prediction of these theories is that for an affective attribute to be self-associated, it would depend not only on the stimulus, but also non-stimulus-specific fluctuations in one’s bodily state; a hypothesis not yet tested. We measured EEG response synchronised to the cardiac cycle – a common way to measure interoceptive neural processing – prior to the presentation of pleasant and unpleasant adjectives to participants. Participants responded if the adjectives were self-descriptive or not. We found that cardiac-pulse-synchronised neural activity prior to the presentation of unpleasant adjectives predicted whether participants subsequently associated that adjective to themselves. This effect was observed over midfrontal scalp locations, commonly observed in interoceptive neural processing. No such effect was observed for pleasant adjectives, or by randomly shuffling the cardiac peak times to account for non-interoceptive neural differences. Our results confirm a key prediction of interoceptive predictive coding theories – that bodily signals are not just modulated in response to self-related and affective arousal, but that a subjective sense of affective self arises due to neural processing of bodily signals. Our results have important implications for many neuropsychiatric disorders that involve altered self-referential processing of unpleasant stimuli.

scholarly journals A continuum hypothesis of psychotomimetic rapid antidepressants

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 239821282110077
Author(s):  
Joost Haarsma ◽  
Catherine J Harmer ◽  
Sandra Tamm
Keyword(s):  
Continuum Hypothesis ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Common Mechanism ◽  
Symptoms Of Depression ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Perceptual Distortions ◽  
Psychotomimetic Effects

Ketamine, classical psychedelics and sleep deprivation are associated with rapid effects on depression. Interestingly, these interventions also have common psychotomimetic actions, mirroring aspects of psychosis such as an altered sense of self, perceptual distortions and distorted thinking. This raises the question whether these interventions might be acute antidepressants through the same mechanisms that underlie some of their psychotomimetic effects. That is, perhaps some symptoms of depression can be understood as occupying the opposite end of a spectrum where elements of psychosis can be found on the other side. This review aims at reviewing the evidence underlying a proposed continuum hypothesis of psychotomimetic rapid antidepressants, suggesting that a range of psychotomimetic interventions are also acute antidepressants as well as trying to explain these common features in a hierarchical predictive coding framework, where we hypothesise that these interventions share a common mechanism by increasing the flexibility of prior expectations. Neurobiological mechanisms at play and the role of different neuromodulatory systems affected by these interventions and their role in controlling the precision of prior expectations and new sensory evidence will be reviewed. The proposed hypothesis will also be discussed in relation to other existing theories of antidepressants. We also suggest a number of novel experiments to test the hypothesis and highlight research areas that could provide further insights, in the hope to better understand the acute antidepressant properties of these interventions.

#3083 Fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS): an interoceptive predictive coding model of pain and fatigue expression

2021 ◽  
Vol 92 (8) ◽  
pp. A3.3-A4
Author(s):  
Harriet Sharp ◽  
Kristy Themelis ◽  
Marisa Amato ◽  
Andrew Barritt ◽  
Kevin Davies ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Error ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Chronic Fatigue ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Pain Thresholds ◽  
Pressure Pain Thresholds ◽  
Interoceptive Accuracy ◽  
Bodily States

IntroductionThe aetiology and pathophysiology of fibromyalgia and ME/CFS are poorly characterised but altered inflammatory, autonomic and interoceptive processes have been implicated. Interoception has been conceptualised as a predictive coding process; where top-down prediction signals compare to bottom-up afferents, resulting in prediction error signals indicating mismatch between expected and actual bodily states. Chronic dyshomeostasis and elevated interoceptive prediction error signals have been theorised to contribute to the expression of pain and fatigue in fibromyalgia and ME/CFS.Objectives/AimsTo investigate how altered interoception and prediction error relates to baseline expression of pain and fatigue in fibromyalgia and ME/CFS and in response to an inflammatory challenge.MethodsSixty-five patients with fibromyalgia and/or ME/CFS diagnosis and 26 matched controls underwent baseline assessment: self-report questionnaires assessing subjective pain and fatigue and objective measurements of pressure-pain thresholds. Participants received injections of typhoid (inflammatory challenge) or saline (placebo) in a randomised, double-blind, crossover design, then completed heartbeat tracking task (assessing interoceptive accuracy). Porges Body Questionnaire assessed interoceptive sensibility. Interoceptive prediction error (IPE) was calculated as discrepancy between objective accuracy and subjective sensibility.ResultsPatients with fibromyalgia and ME/CFS had significantly higher IPE (suggesting tendency to over-estimate interoceptive ability) and interoceptive sensibility, despite no differences in interoceptive accuracy. IPE and sensibility correlated positively with all self-report fatigue and pain measures, and negatively with pain thresholds. Following inflammatory challenge, IPE correlated negatively with the mismatch between subjective and objective measures of pain induced by inflammation.ConclusionsThis is the first study to reveal altered interoception processes in patients with fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, who are known to have dysregulated autonomic function. Notably, we found elevated IPE in patients, correlating with their subjective experiences of pain and fatigue. We hypothesise a predictive coding model, where mismatch between expected and actual internal bodily states (linked to autonomic dysregulation) results in prediction error signalling which could be metacognitively interpreted as chronic pain and fatigue. Our results demonstrate potential for further exploration of interoceptive processing in patients with fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, aiding understanding of these poorly defined conditions and providing potential new targets for diagnostic and therapeutic intervention.

Is Our Brain an Open or Closed System? Prediction Model of Brain and World–Brain Relation

2018 ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Model ◽  
Closed System ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Clinical Symptoms ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
The World ◽  
World Brain ◽  
The Brain

Some recent philosophical discussions consider whether the brain is best understood as an open or closed system. This issue has major epistemic consequences akin to the scepticism engendered by the famous Cartesian demon. Specifically, one and the same empirical theory of brain function, predictive coding, entailing a prediction model of brain, have been associated with contradictory views of the brain as either open (Clark, 2012, 2013) or closed (Hohwy, 2013, 2014). Based on recent empirical evidence, the present paper argues that contrary to appearances, these views of the brain are compatible with one another. I suggest that there are two main forms of neural activity in the brain, one of which can be characterized as open, and the other as closed. Stimulus-induced activity, because it relies on predictive coding is indeed closed to the world, which entails that in certain respects, the brain is an inferentially secluded and self-evidencing system. In contrast, the brain’s resting state or spontaneous activity is best taken as open because it is a world-evidencing system that allows for the brain’s neural activity to align with the statistically-based spatiotemporal structure of objects and events in the world. This model requires an important caveat, however. Due to its statistically-based nature, the resting state’s alignment to the world comes in degrees. In extreme cases, the degree of alignment can be extremely low, resulting in a resting state that is barely if at all aligned to the world. This is for instance the case in schizophrenia. Clinical symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations in schizophrenics are indicative of the fundamental delicateness of the alignment between the brain’s resting-state and the world’s phenomena. Nevertheless, I argue that so long as we are dealing with a well-functioning brain, the more dire epistemic implications of predictive coding can be forestalled. That the brain is in part a self-evidencing system does not yield any generalizable reason to worry that human cognition is out of step with the real world. Instead, the brain is aligned to the world accounting for “world-brain relation” that mitigates sceptistic worries.

Disgust, Bodily Aesthetics and the Ethic of Being Human in Botswana

Africa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Livingston
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Moral Sentiment ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Bodily State ◽  
Bodily States ◽  
Affective Interaction

This article explores how people in Botswana approach and navigate their own feelings of disgust and morbid curiosity towards the aesthetically impaired bodies of their fellow citizens, and the problems and opportunities these feelings present in a context where a particular humanistic ethos of respect and manners, botho, is stressed in the public discourse of nationalism. The agenda of contemporary disability and patients' rights movements is based on the assertion that moral sentiment is neither determined nor subverted by particular bodily states or configurations. While such activism acknowledges and affirms experiences of debility and physical suffering, the political agenda largely centres on enabling persons to participate equally in rational-critical discourse in the public sphere regardless of the vagaries of any individual's particular bodily state. Within this framework, physicality should have no power to structure relationships among citizens. And yet, in Botswana, as in other places, the messiness of the human body – manifested in diarrhoea, drool, disfigurement, and disgust – threatens to subvert humanistic efforts, and challenges the smooth enactment of rights-based politics and other liberal projects. In what follows I explore the sometimes troubling physicality of humanistic and affective life in Botswana to better grasp the messy bodily dimensions of sociality that are so often swept under the rug in discussions of citizenship, rights and community. Aesthetic efforts at bathing, bandaging and otherwise reworking the bodies in question reveal dimensions of sociality and aspects of sensory and affective interaction that are critical to the enactment of moral sentiment.

scholarly journals Integrative capacity of the caudal brainstem in the control of food intake

2006 ◽  
Vol 361 (1471) ◽  
pp. 1275-1280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary J Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Food Intake ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Molecular Genetic ◽  
Visceral Afferents ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Solitary Tract ◽  
Brainstem Nucleus ◽  
Peptide Signals ◽  
Signalling Systems ◽  
Food Consumed

The caudal brainstem nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS) is the initial central nervous system (CNS) terminus for a variety of gastrointestinal mechanical, nutrient chemical and gut peptide signals that limit the amount of food consumed during a meal. It receives neuroanatomical projections from gut vagal and non-vagal visceral afferents that mediate the CNS representation of these meal-stimulated gut feedback signals, and is reciprocally connected to a range of hypothalamic and limbic system sites that play significant roles in the neural processing of meal-related stimuli and in determining food consumption. Neurons in the NTS also contains elements of leptinergic and melanocortinergic signalling systems, presenting the possibility that the brainstem actions of these neuropeptides affect both the NTS processing of meal-stimulated gut afferent neural activity and its behavioural potency. Taken together, these features suggest that the NTS is ideally situated to integrate central and peripheral signals that determine meal size. This manuscript will review recent support from molecular genetic, neurophysiological and immunocytochemical studies that begin to identify and characterize the types of integrative functions performed within the NTS, and highlight the extent to which they are consistent with a causal role for NTS integration of peripheral gut and central neuropeptide signals important in the control of food intake.

Mismatch Negativity and Stimulus-Specific Adaptation in Animal Models

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 214-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Israel Nelken ◽  
Nachum Ulanovsky
Keyword(s):  
Animal Models ◽  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Change Detection ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Single Neuron ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Sensory Coding ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Specific Adaptation

Animal models of MMN may serve both to further our understanding of neural processing beyond pure sensory coding and for unraveling the neural and pharmacological processes involved in the generation of MMN. We start this review by discussing the methodological issues that are especially important when pursuing a single-neuron correlate of MMN. Correlates of MMN have been studied in mice, rats, cats, and primates. Whereas essentially all of these studies demonstrated the presence of stimulus-specific adaptation, in the sense that responses to deviant tones are larger than the responses to standard tones, the presence of real MMN has been established only in a few. We argue for the use of more and better controls in order to clarify the situation. Finally, we discuss in detail the relationships between stimulus-specific adaptation of single-neuron responses, as established in the cat auditory cortex, and MMN. We argue that this is currently the only fully established correlate of true change detection, and hypothesize that it precedes and probably induces the neural activity that is eventually measured as MMN.

scholarly journals Cortical plasticity elicited by acoustically cued monetary losses: an ERP study

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksei Gorin ◽  
Elena Krugliakova ◽  
Vadim Nikulin ◽  
Aleksandra Kuznetsova ◽  
Victoria Moiseeva ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Cortical Plasticity ◽  
Brain Plasticity ◽  
Monetary Incentive ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Auditory Cues ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Monetary Incentive Delay

AbstractBoth human and animal studies have demonstrated remarkable findings of experience-induced plasticity in the cortex. Here, we investigated whether the widely used monetary incentive delay (MID) task changes the neural processing of incentive cues that code expected monetary outcomes. We used a novel auditory version of the MID task, where participants responded to acoustic cues that coded expected monetary losses. To investigate task-induced brain plasticity, we presented incentive cues as deviants during passive oddball tasks before and after two sessions of the MID task. During the oddball task, we recorded the mismatch-related negativity (MMN) as an index of cortical plasticity. We found that two sessions of the MID task evoked a significant enhancement of MMN for incentive cues that predicted large monetary losses, specifically when monetary cue discrimination was essential for maximising monetary outcomes. The task-induced plasticity correlated with the learning-related neural activity recorded during the MID task. Thus, our results confirm that the processing of (loss)incentive auditory cues is dynamically modulated by previously learned monetary outcomes.

The Role of Language in the Construction of Emotion and Memory

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajay B. Satpute ◽  
Erik C. Nook ◽  
Melis E. Cakar
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Psychological Distance ◽  
The Body ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Specific Emotion ◽  
Emotion And Memory ◽  
The Many ◽  
Translational Models

Language is known to play an important role in communicating our thoughts, memories, and emotions. This chapter proposes that the role of language extends much more deeply to further shape and constitutively create these mental phenomena. Research on emotion has shown that language can powerfully influence experiences and perceptions that are affective or emotional. Research on memory, too, has also shown that language can be used to shape autobiographical experiences. The authors organize this work by the many forms and aspects that language may take such as rich narratives, specific emotion words, words that focus on the situation versus words that focus on the body, and even words that convey psychological distance from grammatical tense and pronoun usage. They describe a constructionist theoretical model to understand how language shapes emotion and memory in terms of psychological and neural mechanisms. Their model integrates with recent predictive coding models of neural processing. Finally, the chapter relates this work to clinical and translational models of therapeutic change.

I think therefore I am: Rest-related prefrontal cortex neural activity is involved in generating the sense of self

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 414-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gruberger ◽  
Y. Levkovitz ◽  
T. Hendler ◽  
E.V. Harel ◽  
H. Harari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Sense Of Self

scholarly journals Evaluating the Evidence for Expectation Suppression in the Visual System

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Feuerriegel ◽  
Rufin Vogels ◽  
Gyula Kovacs
Keyword(s):  
Visual System ◽  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Activity Measurement ◽  
Confounding Factors ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Repetition Suppression ◽  
Specific Subset

Expectation suppression is defined as a reduction in a measure of neural activity following an expected stimulus compared to a stimulus that is neither expected nor surprising. Reports of expectation suppression have shaped the development of several influential predictive coding-based theories of visual perception. However recent work has highlighted multiple confounding factors that may mimic or inflate observed expectation suppression effects. In this review, we describe four confounds that are prevalent across studies that have tested for expectation suppression: surprise-related response modulations, effects of attention, stimulus repetition and adaptation, and effects of stimulus novelty. With these confounds in mind we then critically review the evidence for expectation suppression across probabilistic cueing, statistical learning, oddball, action-outcome learning and apparent motion designs. We report that there is evidence for expectation suppression within a specific subset of statistical learning designs that involved weeks of sequence learning prior to neural activity measurement. However, across other experimental contexts, whereby stimulus appearance probabilities were learned within one or two testing sessions, there was a lack of consistent evidence for genuine expectation suppression within the visual system that cannot be accounted for by confounding factors. To underline the importance of devising more appropriate tests for expectation suppression we discuss how an absence of this effect would inform models of predictive processing, repetition suppression and perceptual decision-making. We also provide suggestions for designing experiments that may better test for stimulus expectation effects in future work.

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