scholarly journals Being a beast machine: The origins of selfhood in control-oriented interoceptive inference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anil Seth
Keyword(s):  
Generative Models ◽  
The Body ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Physiological Regulation ◽  
Sensory Signals ◽  
Andy Clark ◽  
Physiological Homeostasis ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Embodied Selfhood

Throughout his career Andy Clark has shaped how scientists and philosophers think about the role of representation in action, perception, and cognition. In the latest iteration of this debate he has foregrounded the influential perspective of ‘predictive processing’, which sees perception as a process of action-oriented ‘best guessing’ (inference) about the causes of noisy and ambiguous sensory signals, and which involves the brain inducing ‘generative’ models of how hidden causes mediate the effects of actions on sensory signals. Here, I will develop this position in the context of interoception (the sense of the body from within) and physiological regulation. A key idea here, which recalls 20th century cybernetic theory, is that interoceptive inference is targeted towards maintaining physiological homeostasis rather than inducing complete and accurate internal models of an external state-of-affairs. I explore how this perspective helps connect control-oriented interoceptive inference to phenomenological properties of embodied selfhood and subjectivity. The upshot echoes (or perhaps subverts) a classic philosophical trope of the Enlightenment philosopher Julien La Mettrie: to find the origins of our conscious selves in our nature as beast machines.

Being a Beast Machine

2019 ◽  
pp. 238-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anil K. Seth
Keyword(s):  
Generative Models ◽  
The Body ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Physiological Regulation ◽  
Sensory Signals ◽  
Andy Clark ◽  
Physiological Homeostasis ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Embodied Selfhood

Throughout his career Andy Clark has shaped how scientists and philosophers think about the role of representation in action, perception, and cognition. In the latest iteration of this debate he has foregrounded the influential perspective of predictive processing, which sees perception as a process of action-oriented “best guessing” (inference) about the causes of noisy and ambiguous sensory signals and which involves the brain-inducing “generative” models of how hidden causes mediate the effects of actions on sensory signals. This chapter develops this position in the context of interoception (the sense of the body from within) and physiological regulation. A key idea here, which recalls twentieth-century cybernetic theory, is that interoceptive inference is targeted towards maintaining physiological homeostasis rather than inducing complete and accurate internal models of an external state of affairs. The chapter explores how this perspective helps connect control-oriented interoceptive inference to phenomenological properties of embodied selfhood and subjectivity. The upshot echoes (or perhaps subverts) a classic philosophical trope of the Enlightenment philosopher Julien de La Mettrie: to find the origins of our conscious selves in our nature as beast machines.

scholarly journals Toward the unity of pathological and exertional fatigue: A predictive processing model

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Greenhouse-Tucknott ◽  
J. B. Butterworth ◽  
J. G. Wrightson ◽  
N. J. Smeeton ◽  
H. D. Critchley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Error ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Physical Exertion ◽  
Generative Models ◽  
The Body ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Research Fields ◽  
Common Foundation ◽  
Health And Disease ◽  
Sensory Evidence

AbstractFatigue is a common experience in both health and disease. Yet, pathological (i.e., prolonged or chronic) and transient (i.e., exertional) fatigue symptoms are traditionally considered distinct, compounding a separation between interested research fields within the study of fatigue. Within the clinical neurosciences, nascent frameworks position pathological fatigue as a product of inference derived through hierarchical predictive processing. The metacognitive theory of dyshomeostasis (Stephan et al., 2016) states that pathological fatigue emerges from the metacognitive mechanism in which the detection of persistent mismatches between prior interoceptive predictions and ascending sensory evidence (i.e., prediction error) signals low evidence for internal generative models, which undermine an agent’s feeling of mastery over the body and is thus experienced phenomenologically as fatigue. Although acute, transient subjective symptoms of exertional fatigue have also been associated with increasing interoceptive prediction error, the dynamic computations that underlie its development have not been clearly defined. Here, drawing on the metacognitive theory of dyshomeostasis, we extend this account to offer an explicit description of the development of fatigue during extended periods of (physical) exertion. Accordingly, it is proposed that a loss of certainty or confidence in control predictions in response to persistent detection of prediction error features as a common foundation for the conscious experience of both pathological and nonpathological fatigue.

scholarly journals Mental Representations in Musical Processing and their Role in Action-Perception Loops

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca S. Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Perception And Action ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
The Body ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Auditory Information ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Tight Coupling ◽  
Musical Perception

Music is created in the listener as it is perceived and interpreted - its meaning derived from our unique sense of it; likely driving the range of interpersonal differences found in music processing. Person-specific mental representations of music are thought to unfold on multiple levels as we listen, spanning from an entire piece of music to regularities detected across notes. As we track incoming auditory information, predictions are generated at different levels for different musical aspects, leading to specific percepts and behavioral outputs, illustrating a tight coupling of cognition, perception and action. This coupling, together with a prominent role of prediction in music processing, fits well with recently described ideas about the role of predictive processing in cognitive function, which appears to be especially suitable to account for the role of mental models in musical perception and action. Investigating the cerebral correlates of constructive music imagination offers an experimentally tractable approach to clarifying how mental models of music are represented in the brain. I suggest here that mental representations underlying imagery are multimodal, informed and modulated by the body and its in- and outputs, while perception and action are informed and modulated by predictions based on mental models.  

scholarly journals Being a beast machine: The somatic basis of selfhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anil Seth ◽  
Manos Tsakiris
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Modern Psychology ◽  
Embodied Selfhood ◽  
Over Time

Modern psychology has long focused on the body as the basis of the self. Recently, predictive processing accounts of interoception (perception of the body ‘from within’) have become influential in accounting for experiences of body ownership and emotion. Here, we describe embodied selfhood in terms of ‘instrumental interoceptive inference’ that emphasises allostatic regulation and physiological integrity. We apply this approach to the distinctive phenome- nology of embodied selfhood, accounting for its non-object-like character and subjective stability over time. Our perspective has implications for the develop- ment of selfhood and illuminates longstanding debates about relations between life and mind, implying, contrary to Descartes, that experiences of embodied selfhood arise because of, and not in spite of, our nature as ‘beast machines’.

scholarly journals The brain dynamics of architectural affordances during transition

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zakaria Djebbara ◽  
Lars Brorson Fich ◽  
Klaus Gramann
Keyword(s):  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
The Body ◽  
Brain Dynamics ◽  
Alpha Band ◽  
Time Frequency ◽  
Posterior Cingulate ◽  
Sensory Signals ◽  
Event Related Desynchronization ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Attentional Mechanisms

AbstractAction is a medium of collecting sensory information about the environment, which in turn is shaped by architectural affordances. Affordances characterize the fit between the physical structure of the body and capacities for movement and interaction with the environment, thus relying on sensorimotor processes associated with exploring the surroundings. Central to sensorimotor brain dynamics, the attentional mechanisms directing the gating function of sensory signals share neuronal resources with motor-related processes necessary to inferring the external causes of sensory signals. Such a predictive coding approach suggests that sensorimotor dynamics are sensitive to architectural affordances that support or suppress specific kinds of actions for an individual. However, how architectural affordances relate to the attentional mechanisms underlying the gating function for sensory signals remains unknown. Here we demonstrate that event-related desynchronization of alpha-band oscillations in parieto-occipital and medio-temporal regions covary with the architectural affordances. Source-level time–frequency analysis of data recorded in a motor-priming Mobile Brain/Body Imaging experiment revealed strong event-related desynchronization of the alpha band to originate from the posterior cingulate complex, the parahippocampal region as well as the occipital cortex. Our results firstly contribute to the understanding of how the brain resolves architectural affordances relevant to behaviour. Second, our results indicate that the alpha-band originating from the occipital cortex and parahippocampal region covaries with the architectural affordances before participants interact with the environment, whereas during the interaction, the posterior cingulate cortex and motor areas dynamically reflect the affordable behaviour. We conclude that the sensorimotor dynamics reflect behaviour-relevant features in the designed environment.

TEMPERATURE REGULATION IN EXERCISE

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-702
Author(s):  
Sid Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Blood Flow ◽  
Body Temperature ◽  
Heat Stroke ◽  
The Body ◽  
Physiological Regulation ◽  
Temperature Changes ◽  
Metabolic Heat ◽  
Warm Blood ◽  
Hot Environments ◽  
Large Increments

The central body temperature of a man rises gradually during the first half hour of a period of work to a higher level and this level is precisely maintained until the work is stopped; body temperature then slowly declines to the usual resting level. During prolonged work the temperature regulatory center in the hypothalamus appears to be reset at a level which is proportional to the intensity of the work and this setting is independent of environmental temperature changes ranging from cold to moderately warm. In hot environments the resistance to heat loss may be so great that all of the increased metabolic heat of work cannot be dissipated and the man's central temperature will rise above the thermostatic setting. If this condition of imbalance is continued long enough heat stroke will ensue. We have found that in a 3 mile race lasting only 14 minutes on a hot summer day a runner's rectal temperature may rise to 41.1°C., with heat stroke imminent. The physiological regulation of body temperature of men in warm environments and during the increased metabolic heat production of work is dependent on sweating to provide evaporative cooling of the skin, and on adjustments of cutaneous blood flow which determine the conductance of heat from the deeper tissues to the skin. The mechanisms of regulating these responses during work are complex and not entirely understood. Recent experiments carried out in this laboratory indicate that during work, sweating may be regulated by reflexes originating from thermal receptors in the veins draining warm blood from the muscles, summated with reflexes from the cutaneous thermal receptors, both acting through the hypothalamic center, the activity of which is increased in proportion to its own temperature. At the beginning of work the demand for blood flow to the muscles results in reflex vasoconstriction in the skin. As the body temperature rises the thermal demand predominates and the cutaneous vessels dilate, increasing heat conductance to the skin. Large increments in cardiac output and compensatory vasoconstriction in the abdominal viscera make these vascular adjustments in work possible without circulatory embarrassment.

Extending predictive processing to the body: Emotion as interoceptive inference

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anil K. Seth ◽  
Hugo D. Critchley
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Physiological Condition ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
The Body ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Bayesian Brain ◽  
New View

AbstractThe Bayesian brain hypothesis provides an attractive unifying framework for perception, cognition, and action. We argue that the framework can also usefully integrate interoception, the sense of the internal physiological condition of the body. Our model of “interoceptive predictive coding” entails a new view of emotion as interoceptive inference and may account for a range of psychiatric disorders of selfhood.

scholarly journals Enacting Media. An Embodied Account of Enculturation Between Neuromediality and New Cognitive Media Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joerg Fingerhut
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Generative Models ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
The World ◽  
Media Work ◽  
The Mind

This paper argues that the still-emerging paradigm of situated cognition requires a more systematic perspective on media to capture the enculturation of the human mind. By virtue of being media, cultural artifacts present central experiential models of the world for our embodied minds to latch onto. The paper identifies references to external media within embodied, extended, enactive, and predictive approaches to cognition, which remain underdeveloped in terms of the profound impact that media have on our mind. To grasp this impact, I propose an enactive account of media that is based on expansive habits as media-structured, embodied ways of bringing forth meaning and new domains of values. We apply such habits, for instance, when seeing a picture or perceiving a movie. They become established through a process of reciprocal adaptation between media artifacts and organisms and define the range of viable actions within such a media ecology. Within an artifactual habit, we then become attuned to a specific media work (e.g., a TV series, a picture, a text, or even a city) that engages us. Both the plurality of habits and the dynamical adjustments within a habit require a more flexible neural architecture than is addressed by classical cognitive neuroscience. To detail how neural and media processes interlock, I will introduce the concept of neuromediality and discuss radical predictive processing accounts that could contribute to the externalization of the mind by treating media themselves as generative models of the world. After a short primer on general media theory, I discuss media examples in three domains: pictures and moving images; digital media; architecture and the built environment. This discussion demonstrates the need for a new cognitive media theory based on enactive artifactual habits—one that will help us gain perspective on the continuous re-mediation of our mind.

"En fullkomlig man"

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 120-128
Author(s):  
Alfred Sjödin
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Bourgeois Society ◽  
Moral Crisis ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Ideal

“The Complete Man”: Body and Society in Viktor Rydberg The article treats the place of the body in the cultural criticism of Viktor Rydberg, not only as a central theme but also as an image with the potential to figuratively describe societal and even cosmic relationships. Rydberg’s ideal of the symmetrical and athletic body is seen in the perspective of his dependence on German neo-humanism and the gymnastic movement. The ideal of bodily symmetry figures as an image of universal man who defies the division of labor, while the deformed body inversely figures as an image of the lack of wholeness in a stratified bourgeois society. This is further elucidated by an analysis of Rydberg’s view of Darwinism and his fear of degeneration. In the final section, special attention is given to Rydberg’s broodings on the “Future of the White Race”. In this text, the body is a figure of the collectivity (the body politic) and its diseases signify political and moral crisis, while the remedy for this state of affairs lies in recognizing the unity of the living, the dead and the unborn in the body of Christ. 

Interactively human: Sharing time, constructing materiality

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 224-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Roepstorff
Keyword(s):  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Action Perception ◽  
Sharing Time

AbstractPredictive processing models of cognition are promising an elegant way to unite action, perception, and learning. However, in the current formulations, they are species-unspecific and have very little particularly human about them. I propose to examine how, in this framework, humans can be able to massively interact and to build shared worlds that are both material and symbolic.

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