Mentalizing homeostasis: The social origins of interoceptive inference

Attachment and body representations in adolescents with personality disorder

BACKGROUND

Attachment theory has served as an influential framework for understanding psychopathology, partly due to reliable assessment methodology. The influence of insecure attachment on attitudes toward the body and the impact this might have for the development of psychopathology is however less well elucidated.

METHOD

A total of 123 adolescents (35 with borderline personality disorder or BPD, 25 with other personality disorders [OPD] and 63 comprising a normative control group) were interviewed with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Mirror Interview (MI). The MI questions respondents about how they feel about their bodies, as they look in the mirror.

RESULTS

The AAIs from the Borderline group were predominantly insecure-preoccupied and unresolved. These adolescents had significantly lower levels of a positive and integrated sense of self and body than the other groups. Regression results revealed a high loving relationship with fathers, low involving anger with father, high coherence of mind, slight derogation of mother & low levels of unresolved loss uniquely and additively predicted 55% of variance in the summary score assigned to MI responses, that is, the summary score for a Positive and Integrated Body Representation (PIBR).

CONCLUSION

Unfavorable attachment experiences and current states of mind regarding attachment may give rise to problems with establishing PIBRs, and thus play a role in the development of psychopathology, especially BPD.

The association between early regulatory problems and adult peer relationship quality is mediated by the brain's allostatic-interoceptive system

BACKGROUND

Early regulatory problems (RPs), i.e., problems with crying, sleeping, and/or feeding during the first years, increase the risk for avoidant personality traits in adulthood, associated with social withdrawal and anxiety. Even more, RPs are linked with functional alterations in the adult default mode and salience networks, comprising the brain's allostatic-interoceptive system (AIS) and playing a role in social interactions. We investigated whether RPs assessed in infancy are associated with difficulties in adult peer relationships mediated by functional alterations of the AIS.

METHODS

As part of a large case-controlled prospective study, 42 adults with previous RPs and 70 matched controls (mean age = 28.48, SD = 2.65, 51% male) underwent fMRI during rest. The analysis focused on the intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) of key nodes of the AIS. Peer relationship quality was assessed via a semi-structured Life Course Interview and the YASR scale. In these same individuals, RPs were assessed at ages 5, 20 and 56 months.

RESULTS

RPs in infancy were associated with lower-quality peer relationships and enhanced functional connectivity of the AIS nodes in adulthood, with a stronger effect for multiple and persistent RPs compared with transient-multiple or single-persistent RPs. Importantly, iFC changes of the dorsal mid insula, a primary interoceptive cortex with frontal and temporal regions, mediated the relationship between early RPs and adult peer relationship quality.

CONCLUSIONS

Results indicate long-lasting social and neural changes associated with early RPs. Our findings further implicate the AIS in both interoceptive and social processes, while indicating the need for early screening of early RPs.

Maternal interoceptive focus is associated with greater reported engagement in mother-infant stroking and rocking

Parental caregiving during infancy is primarily aimed at the regulation of infants' physiological and emotional states. Recent models of embodied cognition propose that interoception, i.e., the perception of internal bodily states, may influence the quality and quantity of parent-infant caregiving. Yet, empirical investigations into this relationship remain scarce. Across two online studies of mothers with 6- to 18-month-old infants during Covid-19 lockdowns, we examined whether mothers' self-reported engagement in stroking and rocking their infant was related to self-reported interoceptive abilities. Additional measures included retrospective accounts of pregnancy and postnatal body satisfaction, and mothers' reports of their infant's understanding of vocabulary relating to body parts. In Study 1 (N = 151) and Study 2 (N = 111), mothers reported their engagement in caregiving behaviours and their tendency to focus on and regulate bodily states. In a subsample from Study 2 (N = 49), we also obtained an objective measure of cardiac interoceptive accuracy using an online heartbeat counting task. Across both studies, the tendency to focus on and regulate interoceptive states was associated with greater mother-infant stroking and rocking. Conversely, we found no evidence for a relationship between objective interoceptive accuracy and caregiving. The findings suggest that interoception may play a role in parental engagement in stroking and rocking, however, in-person dyadic studies are warranted to further investigate this relationship.

Meaningfulness and attachment: what dreams, psychosis and psychedelic states tell us about our need for connection

The human need to find meaning in life and the human need for connection may be two sides of the same coin, a coin forged in the developmental crucible of attachment. Our need for meaningfulness can be traced to our developmental need for connection in the attachment relationship. The free energy principle dictates that in order to resist a natural tendency towards disorder self-organizing systems must generate models that predict the hidden causes of phenomenal experience. In other words, they must make sense of things. In both an evolutionary and ontogenetic sense, the narrative self develops as a model that makes sense of experience. However, the self-model skews the interpretation of experience towards that which is predictable, or already "known." One may say it causes us to "take things personally." Meaning is felt more acutely when defenses are compromised, when the narrative self is offline. This enables meaning-making that is less egocentrically motivated. Dreams, psychosis, and psychedelic states offer glimpses of how we make sense of things absent a coherent narrative self. This has implications for the way we understand such states, and lays bare the powerful reach of attachment in shaping what we experience as meaningful.

Tactile emoticons: Conveying social emotions and intentions with manual and robotic tactile feedback during social media communications

Touch offers important non-verbal possibilities for socioaffective communication. Yet most digital communications lack capabilities regarding exchanging affective tactile messages (tactile emoticons). Additionally, previous studies on tactile emoticons have not capitalised on knowledge about the affective effects of certain mechanoreceptors in the human skin, e.g., the C-Tactile (CT) system. Here, we examined whether gentle manual stroking delivered in velocities known to optimally activate the CT system (defined as 'tactile emoticons'), during lab-simulated social media communications could convey increased feelings of social support and other prosocial intentions compared to (1) either stroking touch at CT sub-optimal velocities, or (2) standard visual emoticons. Participants (N = 36) felt more social intent with CT-optimal compared to sub-optimal velocities, or visual emoticons. In a second, preregistered study (N = 52), we investigated whether combining visual emoticons with tactile emoticons, this time delivered at CT-optimal velocities by a soft robotic device, could enhance the perception of prosocial intentions and affect participants' physiological measures (e.g., skin conductance rate) in comparison to visual emoticons alone. Visuotactile emoticons conveyed more social intent overall and in anxious participants affected physiological measures more than visual emoticons. The results suggest that emotional social media communications can be meaningfully enhanced by tactile emoticons.

Mentalization-based approach for schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a psychotherapeutic proposal for evolved schizophrenic trajectories and serious mental disorders

There is a growing interest in psychotherapeutic approaches to pre-psychotic high-risk states or first-episode psychosis, where mentalization-based treatment has shown its utility. This article presents a mentalization-based approach for the treatment of those individuals diagnosed with an evolved schizophrenia spectrum disorder, whose characteristics make them especially inaccessible to reflective psychotherapeutic treatment. A synthesis of the conceptual frameworks that justify the needs for technical modification of the mentalization-based treatment foundational techniques is carried out, followed by the proposal of adaptations, with a focus in self-agency and patient-therapist dyad. Therapeutic interventions are outlined, including illustrative examples. The mentalizing approach presented here holds promise for future research and treatment opportunities for patients with evolved schizophrenia and other serious mental disorders.

Updating beliefs about pain following advice: Trustworthiness of social advice predicts pain expectations and experience

Prior expectations influence pain experience. These expectations, in turn, rely on prior pain experience, but they may also be socially influenced. Yet, most research has focused on self rather than social expectations about pain, and hardly any studies examined their combined effects on pain. Here, we adopted a Bayesian learning perspective to investigate how explicitly communicated social expectations ('advice about pain tolerance') affect own pain expectations, and ultimately pain tolerance, under varying conditions of social epistemic uncertainty (trustworthiness of the advice). N = 72 female participants took part in a coldpressor (cold water) task before (self-learning baseline) and after (socially-influenced learning) receiving advice about their likely pain tolerance from a confederate, the trustworthiness of whom was experimentally manipulated. We used path analysis to test the hypothesis that social advice from a highly trustworthy confederate would influence participants' expectations about pain more than advice from a less trustworthy source, and that the degree of this social influence would in turn predict pain tolerance. We further used a simplified, Bayesian learning, computational approach for explicit belief updating to examine the role of latent parameters of precision optimisation in how participants subsequently changed their future pain expectations (prospective posterior beliefs) based on the combined effect of the confederate's advice on their own pain expectations, and their own task experience. Results confirmed that participants adjusted their pain expectations towards the confederate's advice more in the high- vs. low-trustworthiness condition, and this advice taking predicted their pain tolerance. Furthermore, the confederate's trustworthiness influenced how participants weighted the confederate's advice in relation to their own expectations and task experience in forming prospective posterior beliefs. When participants received advice from a less trustworthy confederate, their own sensory experience was weighted more highly than their socially-influenced prior expectations. Thus, explicit social advice appears to impact pain by influencing one's own pain expectations, but low social trustworthiness leads to these expectations becoming more malleable to novel, sensory learning.

Disturbed interoception in body dysmorphic disorder: A framework for future research

Body dysmorphic disorder is a severe psychiatric condition characterised by a preoccupation with a perceived appearance flaw or flaws that are typically not observable to others. Although significant advances in understanding the disorder have been made in the past decade, current explanations focus on cognitive, behavioural and visual perceptual disturbances that contribute to the disorder. Such a focus does not consider how perception of the internal body or interoception may be involved, despite (1) clinical observations of disturbed perception of the body in body dysmorphic disorder and (2) disturbed interoception being increasingly recognised as a transdiagnostic factor underlying a wide range of psychopathologies. In this paper, we use an existing model of hierarchical brain function and neural (predictive) processing to propose that body dysmorphic disorder involves defective interoception, with perceived appearance flaws being the result of 'interoceptive prediction errors' that cause body parts to be experienced as 'not just right'. We aim to provide a framework for interoceptive research into body dysmorphic disorder, and outline areas for future research.

Annual Research Review: 'There, the dance is - at the still point of the turning world' - dynamic systems perspectives on coregulation and dysregulation during early development

During development we transition from coregulation (where regulatory processes are shared between child and caregiver) to self-regulation. Most early coregulatory interactions aim to manage fluctuations in the infant's arousal and alertness; but over time, coregulatory processes become progressively elaborated to encompass other functions such as sociocommunicative development, attention and executive control. The fundamental aim of coregulation is to help maintain an optimal 'critical state' between hypo- and hyperactivity. Here, we present a dynamic framework for understanding child-caregiver coregulatory interactions in the context of psychopathology. Early coregulatory processes involve both passive entrainment, through which a child's state entrains to the caregiver's, and active contingent responsiveness, through which the caregiver changes their behaviour in response to behaviours from the child. Similar principles, of interactive but asymmetric contingency, drive joint attention and the maintenance of epistemic states as well as arousal/alertness, emotion regulation and sociocommunicative development. We describe three ways in which active child-caregiver regulation can develop atypically, in conditions such as Autism, ADHD, anxiety and depression. The most well-known of these is insufficient contingent responsiveness, leading to reduced synchrony, which has been shown across a range of modalities in different disorders, and which is the target of most current interventions. We also present evidence that excessive contingent responsiveness and excessive synchrony can develop in some circumstances. And we show that positive feedback interactions can develop, which are contingent but mutually amplificatory child-caregiver interactions that drive the child further from their critical state. We discuss implications of these findings for future intervention research, and directions for future work.

Stroking in early mother-infant exchanges: The role of maternal tactile biography and interoceptive sensibility

Caress-like is a crucial component of caregiving and a key factor in mother-infant interactions. Mother's experience of touch during her own childhood (i.e., tactile biography) has been found to be related to maternal actual use of caress-like touch (i.e., stroking) during mother-infant exchanges. Evidence also suggests that maternal interoceptive sensibility (i.e., self-perceived sensitivity to inner-body sensations) might be related to sensitive caregiving abilities. However, further empirical investigation is needed to understand to what extent tactile biography and interoceptive sensibility have an impact on mothers' stroking when interacting with their infants. Using an online survey, this cross-sectional study explored the potential association between maternal tactile biography, interoceptive sensibility and use of touch for interaction with their own infants in a group of 377 Italian mothers (mean age = 33.29; SD = 4.79). We tested and compared a series of multivariate linear mediation models using maternal tactile biography as predictor, maternal use of affective touch as outcome variable and Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) subscale scores as mediators. We found that, if a mother had positive touch experiences in her own childhood, she may be more likely to use touch in a positive and nurturing way with her own infant (i.e., stroking). Furthermore, mothers' interoceptive sensibility in the form of attention regulation, self-regulation and body listening mediates the association between their past experiences of positive touch and their use of caress-like touch in mother-infant exchanges. This study highlights that maternal tactile biography is directly associated with mothers' use of caress-like touch and indirectly linked to it through the mediating role of interoceptive sensibility.

The Human Affectome

Over the last decades, theoretical perspectives in the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences have proliferated rather than converged due to differing assumptions about what human affective phenomena are and how they work. These metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions, shaped by academic context and values, have dictated affective constructs and operationalizations. However, an assumption about the purpose of affective phenomena can guide us to a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. In this capstone paper, we home in on a nested teleological principle for human affective phenomena in order to synthesize metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. Under this framework, human affective phenomena can collectively be considered algorithms that either adjust based on the human comfort zone (affective concerns) or monitor those adaptive processes (affective features). This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope the Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research.

Touch and look: The role of affective touch in promoting infants' attention towards complex visual scenes

In a complex social environment, stimuli from different sensory modalities need to be integrated to decode communicative meanings. From very early in life, infants have to combine a multitude of sensory features with social and affective attributes. Of all senses, touch constitutes a privileged channel to carry affective-motivational meanings and foster social connection. In the present study, we investigate whether sharing sensory stimulation that varies for its affective value differentially affects infants' attention towards visual stimuli. 6 to 11-month-old infants (N = 42) were familiarized with two characters respectively matched with tactile (affective or non-affective) and auditory stimulation; then repeatedly exposed to scenes where the two characters moved towards target objects. Our results showed a main effect of stimulation (sound vs. touch) on looking times during familiarization, with longer looking times when sound is provided. During scenes presentation, a main effect of the type of touch (affective vs. non affective) emerged, with longer looking times in infants that previously experienced affective touch, suggesting that this sensory experience may critically engage the self and modulate infant attention. Overall, these findings suggest that while sound acts as attention getter, affective touch supports sustained attention towards complex visual scenes beyond the stimulation period itself.

Migraine as an allostatic reset triggered by unresolved interoceptive prediction errors

Until now, a satisfying account of the cause and purpose of migraine has remained elusive. We explain migraine within the frameworks of allostasis (the situationally-flexible, forward-looking equivalent of homeostasis) and active inference (interacting with the environment via internally-generated predictions). Due to its multimodality, and long timescales between cause and effect, allostasis is inherently prone to catastrophic error, which might be impossible to correct once fully manifest, an early indicator which is elevated prediction error (discrepancy between prediction and sensory input) associated with internal sensations (interoception). Errors can usually be resolved in a targeted manner by action (correcting the physiological state) or perception (updating predictions in light of sensory input); persistent errors are amplified broadly and multimodally, to prioritise their resolution (the migraine premonitory phase); finally, if still unresolved, progressive amplification renders further changes to internal or external sensory inputs intolerably intense, enforcing physiological stability, and facilitating accurate allostatic prediction updating. As such, migraine is an effective 'failsafe' for allostasis, however it has potential to become excessively triggered, therefore maladaptive.

Interoceptive technologies for psychiatric interventions: From diagnosis to clinical applications

Interoception-the perception of internal bodily signals-has emerged as an area of interest due to its implications in emotion and the prevalence of dysfunctional interoceptive processes across psychopathological conditions. Despite the importance of interoception in cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry, its experimental manipulation remains technically challenging. This is due to the invasive nature of existing methods, the limitation of self-report and unimodal measures of interoception, and the absence of standardized approaches across disparate fields. This article integrates diverse research efforts from psychology, physiology, psychiatry, and engineering to address this oversight. Following a general introduction to the neurophysiology of interoception as hierarchical predictive processing, we review the existing paradigms for manipulating interoception (e.g., interoceptive modulation), their underlying mechanisms (e.g., interoceptive conditioning), and clinical applications (e.g., interoceptive exposure). We suggest a classification for interoceptive technologies and discuss their potential for diagnosing and treating mental health disorders. Despite promising results, considerable work is still needed to develop standardized, validated measures of interoceptive function across domains and before these technologies can translate safely and effectively to clinical settings.

Mother knows best: Mothers are more egocentric towards their own child's bodily feelings

Our emotional state can influence how we understand other people's emotions, leading to biases in social understanding. Yet emotional egocentric biases in specific relationships such as parent-child dyads, where not only understanding but also emotional and bodily regulation is key, remain relatively unexplored. To investigate these biases and control for sensory priors, we first conducted two experiments in dyads of adult strangers (total N=75) using a bodily Emotional Egocentricity Task that enables simultaneous affective tactile stimulation within a dyad. We showed its effectiveness in eliciting both classical and sensory-controlled egocentric biases. We then recruited 68 mother-child dyads and found that mothers exhibit higher classical and sensory-controlled emotional egocentric biases towards their own child compared to an unfamiliar child. Results suggest that mothers tend to rely on their bodily feelings more when judging the states of their own child than those of other children, possibly consistent with their regulatory parental role.

Cardiac interoception in infants: Behavioral and neurophysiological measures in various emotional and self-related contexts

Interoception, the perception of internal bodily signals, is fundamental to our sense of self. Even though theoretical accounts suggest an important role for interoception in the development of the self, empirical investigations are limited, particularly in infancy. Previous studies used preferential-looking paradigms to assess the detection of sensorimotor and multisensory contingencies in infancy, usually related to proprioception and touch. So far, only one recent study reported that infants discriminated between audiovisual stimuli presented synchronously or asynchronously with their heartbeat. This discrimination was related to the amplitude of the infant's heartbeat evoked potentials (HEP), a neural correlate of interoception. In the current study, we measured looking preferences between synchronous and asynchronous visuocardiac (bimodal), and audiovisuocardiac (trimodal) stimuli as well as the HEP in conditions of different emotional contexts and with different degrees of self-relatedness in a mirror-like setup. While the infants preferred trimodal to bimodal stimuli, we did not observe the predicted differences between synchronous and asynchronous stimulation. Furthermore, the HEP was not modulated by emotional context or self-relatedness. These findings do not support previously published results and highlight the need for further studies on the early development of interoception in relation to the development of the self.

An Integrative Model of Youth Anxiety: Cognitive-Affective Processes and Parenting in Developmental Context

Multiple theoretical frameworks have been proposed to provide a more comprehensive picture of the risk factors that influence anxiety-related developmental trajectories. Nonetheless, there remains a need for an integrative model that outlines: (1) which risk factors may be most pertinent at different points in development, and (2) how parenting may maintain, exacerbate, or attenuate an affective style that is characterized by high negative emotional reactivity to unfamiliar, uncertain, and threatening situations. A developmentally informed, integrative model has the potential to guide treatment development and delivery, which is critical to reducing the public health burden associated with these disorders. This paper outlines a model integrating research on many well-established risk mechanisms for anxiety disorders, focusing on (1) the developmental progression from emotional reactivity constructs early in life to those involving higher-level cognitive processes later in youth, and (2) potential pathways by which parenting may impact the stability of youth's cognitive-affective responses to threat-relevant information across development.

Modeling and controlling the body in maladaptive ways: an active inference perspective on non-suicidal self-injury behaviors

A significant number of persons engage in paradoxical behaviors, such as extreme food restriction (up to starvation) and non-suicidal self-injuries, especially during periods of rapid changes, such as adolescence. Here, we contextualize these and related paradoxical behavior within an active inference view of brain functions, which assumes that the brain forms predictive models of bodily variables, emotional experiences, and the embodied self and continuously strives to reduce the uncertainty of such models. We propose that not only in conditions of excessive or prolonged uncertainty, such as in clinical conditions, but also during pivotal periods of developmental transition, paradoxical behaviors might emerge as maladaptive strategies to reduce uncertainty-by "acting on the body"- soliciting salient perceptual and interoceptive sensations, such as pain or excessive levels of hunger. Although such strategies are maladaptive and run against our basic homeostatic imperatives, they might be functional not only to provide some short-term reward (e.g. relief from emotional distress)-as previously proposed-but also to reduce uncertainty and possibly to restore a coherent model of one's bodily experience and the self, affording greater confidence in who we are and what course of actions we should pursue.

The self and our perception of its synchrony - Beyond internal and external cognition

The self is the core of our mental life which connects one's inner mental life with the external perception. Since synchrony is a key feature of the biological world and its various species, what role does it play for humans? We conducted a large-scale psychological study (n = 1072) combining newly developed visual analogue scales (VAS) for the perception of synchrony and internal and external cognition complemented by several psychological questionnaires. Overall, our findings showed close connection of the perception of synchrony of the self with both internal (i.e., body and cognition) and external (i.e., others, environment/nature) synchrony being associated positively with adaptive and negatively with maladaptive traits of self. Moreover, we have demonstrated how external (i.e., life events like the COVID-19 pandemic) variables modulate the perception of the self's internal-external synchrony. These findings suggest how synchrony with self plays a central role during times of uncertainty.

Beyond Linguistic Relativity, Emotion Concepts Illustrate How Meaning is Contextually and Individually Variable

Kemmerer describes grounded accounts of cognition and, using crosslinguistic diversity across conceptual domains, argues that these accounts entail linguistic relativity. In this comment, I extend Kemmerer's position to the domain of emotion. Emotion concepts exemplify characteristics highlighted by grounded accounts of cognition and differ by culture and language. Recent research further demonstrates considerable situation- and person-specific differences. Based on this evidence, I argue that emotion concepts carry unique implications for variation in meaning and experience, entailing a relativity that is contextual and individual in addition to linguistic. I conclude by considering what such pervasive relativity means for interpersonal understanding.

Body as First Teacher: The Role of Rhythmic Visceral Dynamics in Early Cognitive Development

Embodied cognition-the idea that mental states and processes should be understood in relation to one's bodily constitution and interactions with the world-remains a controversial topic within cognitive science. Recently, however, increasing interest in predictive processing theories among proponents and critics of embodiment alike has raised hopes of a reconciliation. This article sets out to appraise the unificatory potential of predictive processing, focusing in particular on embodied formulations of active inference. Our analysis suggests that most active-inference accounts invoke weak, potentially trivial conceptions of embodiment; those making stronger claims do so independently of the theoretical commitments of the active-inference framework. We argue that a more compelling version of embodied active inference can be motivated by adopting a diachronic perspective on the way rhythmic physiological activity shapes neural development in utero. According to this visceral afferent training hypothesis, early-emerging physiological processes are essential not only for supporting the biophysical development of neural structures but also for configuring the cognitive architecture those structures entail. Focusing in particular on the cardiovascular system, we propose three candidate mechanisms through which visceral afferent training might operate: (a) activity-dependent neuronal development, (b) periodic signal modeling, and (c) oscillatory network coordination.

Placebo and Nocebo Effects as Bayesian-Brain Phenomena: The Overlooked Role of Likelihood and Attention

The Bayesian-brain framework applied to placebo responses and other mind-body interactions suggests that the effects on the body result from the interaction between priors, such as expectations and learning, and likelihood, such as somatosensorial information. Significant research in this area focuses on the role of the priors, but the relevance of the likelihood has been surprisingly overlooked. One way of manipulating the relevance of the likelihood is by paying attention to sensorial information. We suggest that attention can influence both precision and position (i.e., the relative distance from the priors) of the likelihood by focusing on specific components of the somatosensorial information. Two forms of attention seem particularly relevant in this framework: mindful attention and selective attention. Attention has the potential to be considered a "major player" in placebo/nocebo research, together with expectations and learning. In terms of application, relying on attentional strategies as "amplifiers" or "silencers" of sensorial information could lead to an active involvement of individuals in shaping their care process and health. In this contribution, we discuss the theoretical implications of these intuitions with the aim to provide a comprehensive framework that includes Bayesian brain, placebo/nocebo effects, and the role of attention in mind-body interactions.

Topography and relationship-specific social touching in individuals displaying body image disturbances

Interpersonal touch is intimately related to the emotional bond between the touch giver and the touch receiver. Which bodily regions we touch in those individuals in our social network is relationship specific. Perception of interpersonal touch is altered in psychiatric disorders characterised by body image disturbances (BIDs). Here, we examined whether the 'imagined' experience of social touch in individuals with BIDs is body topography- and relationship-specific. By using an interactive media mobile App, the Virtual Touch Toolkit, high versus low levels of BIDs participants completed heatmaps of full-body virtual avatars, to indicate the body regions they find soothing/unpleasant to be touched by a loved one versus an acquaintance. Self-reports of interoceptive awareness and dysmorphic concerns were also measured. Overall, imagined touch was rated as the most soothing when received from a loved one, and also when this was delivered to 'social' body regions. The importance of the social relationship for the imagined tactile interactions was particularly evident for the high levels of BIDs group, with greater problems with interoceptive awareness predicting higher soothing touch ratings when this was received by a loved one. Despite the evidence that imagined bodily contacts between meaningful people is the most pleasant for socially acceptable bodily regions, our findings may suggest a greater sensitivity to relation-specific bodily patterns of social touch particularly in the high level of BIDs group. Heightened interoceptive awareness may also play a key role in this experience of bodily affective contacts. Future research for body-oriented therapy for BIDs is encouraged to systematically probe the efficacy of imagined social touch interaction protocols which use more plausible, ecological, scenarios where touch is delivered by loved ones and to socially acceptable bodily regions.

Toward reframing brain-social dynamics: current assumptions and future challenges

Evolutionary analyses suggest that the human social brain and sociality appeared together. The two fundamental tools that accelerated the concurrent emergence of the social brain and sociality include learning and plasticity. The prevailing core idea is that the primate brain and the cortex in particular became reorganised over the course of evolution to facilitate dynamic adaptation to ongoing changes in physical and social environments. Encouraged by computational or survival demands or even by instinctual drives for living in social groups, the brain eventually learned how to learn from social experience via its massive plastic capacity. A fundamental framework for modeling these orchestrated dynamic responses is that social plasticity relies upon neuroplasticity. In the present article, we first provide a glimpse into the concepts of plasticity, experience, with emphasis on social experience. We then acknowledge and integrate the current theoretical concepts to highlight five key intertwined assumptions within social neuroscience that underlie empirical approaches for explaining the brain-social dynamics. We suggest that this epistemological view provides key insights into the ontology of current conceptual frameworks driving future research to successfully deal with new challenges and possible caveats in favour of the formulation of novel assumptions. In the light of contemporary societal challenges, such as global pandemics, natural disasters, violent conflict, and other human tragedies, discovering the mechanisms of social brain plasticity will provide new approaches to support adaptive brain plasticity and social resilience.

Interoceptive abilities facilitate taking another's spatial perspective

Information can be perceived from a multiplicity of spatial perspectives, which is central to effectively understanding and interacting with our environment and other people. Interoception, the sense of the physiological state of our body, is also a fundamental component contributing to our perception. However, whether the perception of our inner body signals influences our ability to adopt and flexibly change between different spatial perspectives remains poorly understood. To investigate this, 90 participants completed tasks assessing multiple dimensions of interoception (interoceptive sensibility, cardiac interoceptive accuracy and awareness) and the Graphesthesia task to assess tactile spatial perspective-taking and its flexibility. The results revealed that higher cardiac interoceptive awareness is associated with greater consistency in adopting a perspective decentred from the self. Second, higher cardiac interoceptive accuracy was associated with slower and less accurate performance in switching from a decentred to an egocentred perspective. These results show that interoceptive abilities facilitate decentred spatial perspective-taking, likely reflecting stronger perceived boundaries between internal states and the external world.

Infants' interoception is associated with eye contact in dyadic social interactions

Interoception, that is, the perception of visceral stimuli, is the basis of socio-emotional development. However, no studies have demonstrated the relationship between the two in infants. This study aimed to elucidate the relationship between interoception and social behavior in infants and mothers. Visual preference for cardio-visual synchronous and asynchronous stimuli was assessed using a preferential-looking paradigm in 6-month infants and their mothers. The infant-mother interaction was also measured to assess social behavior, such as eye contact and positive facial expressions. The results showed that infants looked at asynchronous cardio-visual stimuli longer than synchronous cardio-visual stimuli, whereas mothers looked at synchronous cardio-visual stimuli longer than asynchronous cardio-visual stimuli. The proportion of looking time toward asynchronous cardio-visual stimuli in infants was positively correlated with infant-mother gaze and affect (positive facial expression) synchrony. Furthermore, mediation analyses showed that the relationship between infants' interoception and eye contact behavior is attributable to mother's positive facial expression. Our findings suggest that in infant-mother interactions, infants' interoception may play a role in eye contact behavior through the mother's positive facial expression, highlighting the importance of infants' interoception on social cognitive development.

Interoceptive Awareness of the Breath Preserves Attention and Language Networks amidst Widespread Cortical Deactivation: A Within-Participant Neuroimaging Study

Interoception, the representation of the body's internal state, serves as a foundation for emotion, motivation, and wellbeing. Yet despite its centrality in human experience, the neural mechanisms of interoceptive attention are poorly understood. The Interoceptive/Exteroceptive Attention Task (IEAT) is a novel neuroimaging paradigm that compares behavioral tracking of the respiratory cycle (Active Interoception) to tracking of a visual stimulus (Active Exteroception). Twenty-two healthy participants completed the IEAT during two separate scanning sessions (N = 44) as part of a randomized control trial of mindful awareness in body-oriented therapy (MABT). Compared with Active Exteroception, Active Interoception deactivated somatomotor and prefrontal regions. Greater self-reported interoceptive sensibility (MAIA scale) predicted sparing from deactivation within the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and left-lateralized language regions. The right insula, typically described as a primary interoceptive cortex, was only specifically implicated by its deactivation during an exogenously paced respiration condition (Active Matching) relative to self-paced Active Interoception. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis characterized Active Interoception as promoting greater ACC connectivity with lateral prefrontal and parietal regions commonly referred to as the dorsal attention network (DAN). In contrast to evidence relating accurate detection of liminal interoceptive signals such as the heartbeat to anterior insula activity, interoceptive attention toward salient signals such as the respiratory cycle may involve reduced cortical activity but greater ACC-DAN connectivity, with greater sensibility linked to reduced deactivation within the ACC and language-processing regions.

Somatovisceral influences on emotional development

Frameworks of emotional development have tended to focus on how environmental factors shape children's emotion understanding. However, individual experiences of emotion represent a complex interplay between both external environmental inputs and internal somatovisceral signaling. Here, we discuss the importance of afferent signals and coordination between central and peripheral mechanisms in affective response processing. We propose that incorporating somatovisceral theories of emotions into frameworks of emotional development can inform how children understand emotions in themselves and others. We highlight promising directions for future research on emotional development incorporating this perspective, namely afferent cardiac processing and interoception, immune activation, physiological synchrony, and social touch.

"Feeling Invisible": Individuals With Borderline Personality Disorder Underestimate the Transparency of Their Emotions

The present study investigated transparency estimation, that is, the ability to estimate how observable one's emotions are, in patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) (n = 35) and healthy controls (HCs; n = 35). Participants watched emotionally evocative video clips and estimated the transparency of their own emotional experience while watching the clip. Facial expression coding software (FaceReader) quantified their objective transparency. BPD patients felt significantly less transparent than HCs, but there were no differences in objective transparency. BPD patients tended to underestimate the transparency of their emotions compared to HCs, who in turn overestimated their transparency. This suggests that BPD patients expect that others will not know how they feel, irrespective of how observable their emotions actually are. We link these findings to low emotional awareness and a history of emotional invalidation in BPD, and we discuss their impact on BPD patients' social functioning.

Embodying Consciousness through Interoception and a Balanced Time Perspective

This review presents current research and scientific knowledge in body mind sciences through the lens of interoception, as a representative of the body; and time perspective, as the representative of the mind. This intertwining dichotomy has been a subject of discourse in many fields, all having the common denominator of consciousness. Our aim is to expand on the congruities of these seemingly deconstructed worlds-of science and philosophy, of the body and the mind, to show that the place of consciousness lies in the zone between these two. Being aware of the body in the present moment. We introduce interoception and time perspective, focusing on how interoceptive signals are depicted in autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation, and how this relates to the concept of a balanced time perspective (BTP), a highly adaptive psychological characteristic. Time perspective and interoception are also reviewed in the case of clinical conditions. We assess findings on interoceptive pathways in the body, finding convergence with balanced time perspective through the neuroanatomical lens. We conclude with findings that both dysregulated interoceptive states and a time perspective disbalance are recognized as defining features of mental disorders, proposing prospective practical therapeutic approaches, as well as implications for further research in the field.

Dyadic inter-brain EEG coherence induced by interoceptive hyperscanning

Previous single-brain studies suggested interoception plays a role in interpersonal synchronization. The aim of the present study was to assess the electrophysiological intersubject coherence through electrophysiological (EEG) hyperscanning recording during simple dyadic synchronization tasks when the participants focused on their breath. To this aim, the neural activity of 15 dyads of participants was collected during the execution of a cognitive and motor synchronization task in two distinct IA conditions: focus and no focus on the breath condition. Individuals' EEG frequency bands were recorded through EEG hyperscanning and coherence analysis was performed. Results showed greater EEG coherence was observed for the alpha band in frontopolar brain regions (Fp1, Fp2) and also in central brain regions (C3, C4) within the dyads, during the focus on the breath condition for the motor compared to the cognitive synchronization task; during the same experimental condition, delta and theta band showed augmented inter-individual coherence in the frontal region (Fz) and central areas (C3, C4). To conclude, the current hyperscanning study highlights how the manipulation of the interoceptive focus (obtained through the focus on the breath) strengthens the manifestation of the EEG markers of interpersonal tuning during a motor synchronization task in specific brain areas.

Modulations of one's sense of agency during human-machine interactions: A behavioural study using a full humanoid robot

Although previous investigations reported a reduced sense of agency when individuals act with traditional machines, little is known about the mechanisms underpinning interactions with human-like automata. The aim of this study was twofold: (1) to investigate the effect of the machine's physical appearance on the individuals' sense of agency and (2) to explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying the individuals' sense of agency when they are engaged in a joint task. Twenty-eight participants performed a joint Simon task together with another human or an automated artificial system as a co-agent. The physical appearance of the automated artificial system was manipulated so that participants could cooperate either with a servomotor or a full humanoid robot during the joint task. Both participants' response times and temporal estimations of action-output delays (i.e., an implicit measure of agency) were collected. Results showed that participants' sense of agency for self- and other-generated actions sharply declined during interactions with the servomotor compared with the human-human interactions. Interestingly, participants' sense of agency for self- and other-generated actions was reinforced when participants interacted with the humanoid robot compared with the servomotor. These results are discussed further.

Interpersonal attunement in social interactions: from collective psychophysiology to inter-personalized psychiatry and beyond

In this article, we analyse social interactions, drawing on diverse points of views, ranging from dialectics, second-person neuroscience and enactivism to dynamical systems, active inference and machine learning. To this end, we define interpersonal attunement as a set of multi-scale processes of building up and materializing social expectations-put simply, anticipating and interacting with others and ourselves. While cultivating and negotiating common ground, via communication and culture-building activities, are indispensable for the survival of the individual, the relevant multi-scale mechanisms have been largely considered in isolation. Here, collective psychophysiology, we argue, can lend itself to the fine-tuned analysis of social interactions, without neglecting the individual. On the other hand, an interpersonal mismatch of expectations can lead to a breakdown of communication and social isolation known to negatively affect mental health. In this regard, we review psychopathology in terms of interpersonal misattunement, conceptualizing psychiatric disorders as disorders of social interaction, to describe how individual mental health is inextricably linked to social interaction. By doing so, we foresee avenues for an inter-personalized psychiatry, which moves from a static spectrum of disorders to a dynamic relational space, focusing on how the multi-faceted processes of social interaction can help to promote mental health. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

The social roots of self development: from a bodily to an intellectual interpersonal dialogue

In this paper, we propose that interpersonal bodily interactions represent a fertile ground in which the bodily and psychological self is developed, gradually allowing for forms of more abstract and disembodied interactions. We start by focusing on how early infant-caregiver bodily interactions play a crucial role in shaping the boundaries of the self but also in learning to predict others' behavior. We then explore the social function of the sense of touch in the entire life span, highlighting its role in promoting physical and psychological well-being by supporting positive interpersonal exchanges. We go on by introducing the concept of implicit theory of mind, as the early ability to interpret others' intentions, possibly grounded in infant-caregiver bodily exchanges (embodied practices). In the following part, we consider so-called higher level forms of social interaction: intellectual exchanges among individuals. In this regard, we defend the view that, beside the apparent private dimension of "thinking abstractly", using abstract concepts is intrinsically a social process, as it entails the re-enactment of the internalized dialogue through which we acquired the concepts in the first place. Finally, we describe how the hypothesis of "dialectical attunement" may explain the development of abstract thinking: to effectively transform the world according to their survival needs, individuals co-construct structured concepts of it; by doing so, humans fundamentally transform not merely the world they are being in, but their being in the world.

The Role of the Skin in Interoception: A Neglected Organ?

In the past 2 decades, interoception has received increasing attention in the fields of psychology and cognitive science, as well as neuroscience and physiology. A plethora of studies adopted the perception of cardiac signals as a proxy for interoception. However, recent findings have cast doubt on the methodological and intrinsic validity of the tasks used thus far. Therefore, there is an ongoing effort to improve the existing cardiac interoceptive tasks and to identify novel channels to target the perception of the physiological state of the body. Amid such scientific abundancy, one could question whether the field has been partially neglecting one of our widest organs in terms of dimensions and functions: the skin. According to some views grounded on anatomical and physiological evidence, skin-mediated signals such as affective touch, pain, and temperature have been redefined as interoceptive. However, there is no agreement in this regard. Here, we discuss some of the anatomical, physiological, and experimental arguments supporting the scientific study of interoception by means of skin-mediated signals. We argue that more attention should be paid to the skin as a sensory organ that monitors the bodily physiological state and further propose thermosensation as a particularly attractive model of skin-mediated interoception.

[Mentalizing as Psychosocial Vaccination in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy]

Based on the psychological stress caused by theCovid 19 pandemic in families, this article explores the fundamental question of how the psychological process of mentalizing - metaphorically speaking - can act as a psychosocial vaccination in stressful times. To this end, we look at the developments in the psychosocial context under the conditions of the pandemic and consider the effects on child and adolescent psychotherapy on the basis of a vignette of a group therapy session.

Depersonalization disorder as a systematic downregulation of interoceptive signals

Depersonalisation disorder (DPD) is a psychopathological condition characterised by a feeling of detachment from one's own body and surrounding, and it is understood as emerging from the downregulation of interoceptive afferents. However, the precise mechanisms that drive this 'interoceptive silencing' are yet to be clarified. Here we present a computational and neurobiologically plausible model of DPD within the active inference framework. Specifically, we describe DPD as arising from disrupted interoceptive processing at higher levels of the cortical hierarchy where the interoceptive and exteroceptive streams are integrated. We simulated the behaviour of an agent subjected to a situation of high interoceptive activation despite the absence of a perceivable threat in the external environment. The simulation showed how a similar condition, if perceived as inescapable, would result in a downregulation of interoceptive signals, whilst leaving the exteroceptive ones unaffected. Such interoceptive silencing would force the agent to over-rely on exteroceptive information and would ultimately lead to the DPD phenomenology. Finally, our simulation shows that repeated exposure to similar situations over time will lead the agent to increasingly disengage from bodily responses even in the face of a less triggering situation, explaining how a single episode of depersonalization can lead to chronic DPD.

The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders

Although the manifestation of trauma in the body is a phenomenon well-endorsed by clinicians and traumatized individuals, the neurobiological underpinnings of this manifestation remain unclear. The notion of somatic sensory processing, which encompasses vestibular and somatosensory processing and relates to the sensory systems concerned with how the physical body exists in and relates to physical space, is introduced as a major contributor to overall regulatory, social-emotional, and self-referential functioning. From a phylogenetically and ontogenetically informed perspective, trauma-related symptomology is conceptualized to be grounded in brainstem-level somatic sensory processing dysfunction and its cascading influences on physiological arousal modulation, affect regulation, and higher-order capacities. Lastly, we introduce a novel hierarchical model bridging somatic sensory processes with limbic and neocortical mechanisms regulating an individual's emotional experience and sense of a relational, agentive self. This model provides a working framework for the neurobiologically informed assessment and treatment of trauma-related conditions from a somatic sensory processing perspective.

Cognition as Morphological/Morphogenetic Embodied Computation In Vivo

Cognition, historically considered uniquely human capacity, has been recently found to be the ability of all living organisms, from single cells and up. This study approaches cognition from an info-computational stance, in which structures in nature are seen as information, and processes (information dynamics) are seen as computation, from the perspective of a cognizing agent. Cognition is understood as a network of concurrent morphological/morphogenetic computations unfolding as a result of self-assembly, self-organization, and autopoiesis of physical, chemical, and biological agents. The present-day human-centric view of cognition still prevailing in major encyclopedias has a variety of open problems. This article considers recent research about morphological computation, morphogenesis, agency, basal cognition, extended evolutionary synthesis, free energy principle, cognition as Bayesian learning, active inference, and related topics, offering new theoretical and practical perspectives on problems inherent to the old computationalist cognitive models which were based on abstract symbol processing, and unaware of actual physical constraints and affordances of the embodiment of cognizing agents. A better understanding of cognition is centrally important for future artificial intelligence, robotics, medicine, and related fields.

An economic model of the drives from Friston's free energy perspective

This paper is focused on the theory of drives, particularly on its economic model, which was an integral part of Freud's original formulation. Freud was aiming to make a link between the psychic energy of drives and the biophysical rules of nature. However, he was not able to develop this model into a comprehensive system linking the body and the mind. The further development of psychoanalytic theory, in various attempts to comprehend the theory of drives, can be described as taking different approaches. Some of them equate drives with bodily impulses, others abandon the economic model, a few stay with Freud's original model. I believe that the Friston notion of free energy and the hierarchical model of the brain allows us to develop this model and to integrate the economic model into some contemporary theories of drives. I argue against those theories equating drives with biological impulses. My arguments are supported by Freud's project itself but also by recent developments within neuro-psychoanalysis describing the process of mentalizing homeostasis, interoceptive signals and relations with caregivers. I argue for those theories which see the drives as psychic forces, which through developmental processes and cathexes acquire aims and objects, and become intertwined with impulses originating internally and externally, such as affect, interoceptive impulses, perception of the external world, and impulses from erotogenic zones in particular. Here, I present my analysis of the compatibility and consistency of free energy and the hierarchical model perspective, and two psychoanalytical traditions of thoughts: French psychoanalysis and the post-Kleinian school of British psychoanalysis. In particular, my analysis focuses on the contemporary Kleinian notion of unconscious phantasies, especially Bronstein's description of their semiotic aspects. Secondly, I look at Segal's view of drives as dialectic forces of adaptation vs. conservatism. Analyzing the French tradition, I focus on Green's perspective on the drives, Lacan's distinction between drives and desire, and Penot's description of the process of subjectivation. I conclude that free energy, as described by Friston, can be seen as a source of the drives' energy and the process of minimizing it is an equivalent of what Freud described as binding the free energy, in which psychic unbound energy acquires distinctive features and becomes bound.

Allostasis as a core feature of hierarchical gradients in the human brain

This paper integrates emerging evidence from two broad streams of scientific literature into one common framework: (a) hierarchical gradients of functional connectivity that reflect the brain's large-scale structural architecture (e.g., a lamination gradient in the cerebral cortex); and (b) approaches to predictive processing and one of its specific instantiations called allostasis (i.e., the predictive regulation of energetic resources in the service of coordinating the body's internal systems). This synthesis begins to sketch a coherent, neurobiologically inspired framework suggesting that predictive energy regulation is at the core of human brain function, and by extension, psychological and behavioral phenomena, providing a shared vocabulary for theory building and knowledge accumulation.

An integrative perspective on the role of touch in the development of intersubjectivity

Touch concerns a fundamental component of sociality. In this review, we examine the hypothesis that somatomotor development constitutes a crucial psychophysiological element in the ontogeny of intersubjectivity. An interdisciplinary perspective is provided on how the communication channel of touch contributes to the sense of self and extends to the social self. During gestation, the transformation of random movements into organized sequences of actions with sensory consequences parallels the development of the brain's functional architecture. Brain subsystems shaped by the coordinated activity of somatomotor circuits to support these first body-environment interactions are the first brain functional arrangements to develop. We propose that tactile self-referring behaviour during gestation constitutes a prototypic mode of interpersonal exchange that supports the subsequent development of intersubjective exchange. The reviewed research suggests that touch constitutes a pivotal bodily experience that in early stages builds and later filters self-other interactions. This view is corroborated by the fact that aberrant social-affective touch experiences appear fundamentally associated with attachment anomalies, interpersonal trauma, and personality disorders. Given the centrality of touch for the development of intersubjectivity and for psychopathological conditions in the social domain, dedicated research is urged to elucidate the role of touch in the evolution of subjective self-other coding.

Two modes of being together: The levels of intersubjectivity and human relatedness in neuroscience and psychoanalytic thinking

The notion of intersubjectivity has achieved a primary status in contemporary psychoanalytic debate, stimulating new theoretical proposals as well as controversies. This paper presents an overview of the main contributions on inter-subjectivity in the field of neurosciences. In humans as well as-probably-in other species, the ability for emotional resonance is guaranteed early in development. Based on this capacity, a primary sense of connectedness is established that can be defined inter-subjective in that it entails sharing affective states and intentions with caregivers. We propose to define such a form of inter-subjectivity as contingent, since the infant's early abilities for resonance do not imply the more generalized capacity to permanently conceive of the relationship outside the realm of current interactions and the infant-caregiver's mutual correspondence of internal states. This form of connection, hence, results in a self-referential, bodily, and affectively codified, context- and time dependent, like-me experience of interactions. The gradual maturation of brain structures and processes as well as interactive experiences allow proper intersubjectivity exchanges, grounded on new intentional and representational capacities, to evolve. In this more mature form of intersubjectivity, the individual is allowed to conceive of her own psychic space both as distinct and as possibly connected with the other's contents and experience, even in the absence of current behavioral indicators of such correspondence. This multi-layered model of intersubjectivity, which is embraced by current neuroscience research, seems to allow for new interpretations of psychoanalytic models of human relatedness based upon classic clinical observations.

The nested hierarchy of self and its trauma: In search for a synchronic dynamic and topographical re-organization

The sense of self has always been a topic of high interest in both psychoanalysis and most recently in neuroscience. Nowadays, there is an agreement in psychoanalysis that the self emerges from the relationship with the other (e.g., the caregiver) in terms of his/her capacity to attune, regulate, and synchronize with the emergent self of the infant. The outcome of this relational/intersubjective synchronization is the development of the sense of self and its regulatory processes both in dynamic psychology and neuroscience. In this work, we propose that synchrony is a fundamental biobehavioral factor in these dialectical processes between self and others which shapes the brain-body-mind system of the individuals, including their sense of self. Recently in neuroscience, it has been proposed by the research group around Northoff that the self is constituted by a brain-based nested hierarchical three-layer structure, including interoceptive, proprio-exteroceptive, and mental layers of self. This may be disrupted, though, when traumatic experiences occur. Following the three levels of trauma theorized by Mucci, we here suggest how different levels of traumatic experiences might have an enduring effect in yielding a trauma-based topographic and dynamic re-organization of the nested model of self featured by dissociation. In conclusion, we propose that different levels and degrees of traumatic experience are related to corresponding disruptions in the topography and dynamic of the brain-based three-layer hierarchical structure of the self.

Therapeutic Alliance as Active Inference: The Role of Therapeutic Touch and Biobehavioural Synchrony in Musculoskeletal Care

Touch is recognised as crucial for survival, fostering cooperative communication, accelerating recovery, reducing hospital stays, and promoting overall wellness and the therapeutic alliance. In this hypothesis and theory paper, we present an entwined model that combines touch for alignment and active inference to explain how the brain develops "priors" necessary for the health care provider to engage with the patient effectively. We appeal to active inference to explain the empirically integrative neurophysiological and behavioural mechanisms that underwrite synchronous relationships through touch. Specifically, we offer a formal framework for understanding - and explaining - the role of therapeutic touch and hands-on care in developing a therapeutic alliance and synchrony between health care providers and their patients in musculoskeletal care. We first review the crucial importance of therapeutic touch and its clinical role in facilitating the formation of a solid therapeutic alliance and in regulating allostasis. We then consider how touch is used clinically - to promote cooperative communication, demonstrate empathy, overcome uncertainty, and infer the mental states of others - through the lens of active inference. We conclude that touch plays a crucial role in achieving successful clinical outcomes and adapting previous priors to create intertwined beliefs. The ensuing framework may help healthcare providers in the field of musculoskeletal care to use hands-on care to strengthen the therapeutic alliance, minimise prediction errors (a.k.a., free energy), and thereby promote recovery from physical and psychological impairments.

The Problem of Meaning: The Free Energy Principle and Artificial Agency

Biological agents can act in ways that express a sensitivity to context-dependent relevance. So far it has proven difficult to engineer this capacity for context-dependent sensitivity to relevance in artificial agents. We give this problem the label the “problem of meaning”. The problem of meaning could be circumvented if artificial intelligence researchers were to design agents based on the assumption of the continuity of life and mind. In this paper, we focus on the proposal made by enactive cognitive scientists to design artificial agents that possess sensorimotor autonomy—stable, self-sustaining patterns of sensorimotor interaction that can ground values, norms and goals necessary for encountering a meaningful environment. More specifically, we consider whether the Free Energy Principle (FEP) can provide formal tools for modeling sensorimotor autonomy. There is currently no consensus on how to understand the relationship between enactive cognitive science and the FEP. However, a number of recent papers have argued that the two frameworks are fundamentally incompatible. Some argue that biological systems exhibit historical path-dependent learning that is absent from systems that minimize free energy. Others have argued that a free energy minimizing system would fail to satisfy a key condition for sensorimotor agency referred to as “interactional asymmetry”. These critics question the claim we defend in this paper that the FEP can be used to formally model autonomy and adaptivity. We will argue it is too soon to conclude that the two frameworks are incompatible. There are undeniable conceptual differences between the two frameworks but in our view each has something important and necessary to offer. The FEP needs enactive cognitive science for the solution it provides to the problem of meaning. Enactive cognitive science needs the FEP to formally model the properties it argues to be constitutive of agency. Our conclusion will be that active inference models based on the FEP provides a way by which scientists can think about how to address the problems of engineering autonomy and adaptivity in artificial agents in formal terms. In the end engaging more closely with this formalism and its further developments will benefit those working within the enactive framework.

Perspective-taking is associated with increased discriminability of affective states in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Recent work using multivariate-pattern analysis (MVPA) on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data has found that distinct affective states produce correspondingly distinct patterns of neural activity in the cerebral cortex. However, it is unclear whether individual differences in the distinctiveness of neural patterns evoked by affective stimuli underlie empathic abilities such as perspective-taking (PT). Accordingly, we examined whether we could predict PT tendency from the classification of blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI activation patterns while participants (n = 57) imagined themselves in affectively charged scenarios. We used an MVPA searchlight analysis to map where in the brain activity patterns permitted the classification of four affective states: happiness, sadness, fear and disgust. Classification accuracy was significantly above chance levels in most of the prefrontal cortex and in the posterior medial cortices. Furthermore, participants' self-reported PT was positively associated with classification accuracy in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and insula. This finding has implications for understanding affective processing in the prefrontal cortex and for interpreting the cognitive significance of classifiable affective brain states. Our multivariate approach suggests that PT ability may rely on the grain of internally simulated affective representations rather than simply the global strength.