The neurobiology of interoception and affect

Scholars have argued for centuries that affective states involve interoception, or representations of the state of the body. Yet, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how signals from the body are transduced, transmitted, compressed, and integrated by the brains of humans to produce affective states. We suggest that to understand how the body contributes to affect, we first need to understand information flow through the nervous system's interoceptive pathways. We outline such a model and discuss how unique anatomical and physiological aspects of interoceptive pathways may give rise to the qualities of affective experiences in general and valence and arousal in particular. We conclude by considering implications and future directions for research on interoception, affect, emotions, and human mental experiences.

Arousal coherence, uncertainty, and well-being: an active inference account

Here we build on recent findings which show that greater alignment between our subjective experiences (how we feel) and physiological states (measurable changes in our body) plays a pivotal role in the overall psychological well-being. Specifically, we propose that the alignment or 'coherence' between affective arousal (e.g. how excited we 'feel') and autonomic arousal (e.g. heart rate or pupil dilation) may be key for maintaining up-to-date uncertainty representations in dynamic environments. Drawing on recent advances in interoceptive and affective inference, we also propose that arousal coherence reflects interoceptive integration, facilitates adaptive belief updating, and impacts our capacity to adapt to changes in uncertainty, with downstream consequences to well-being. We also highlight the role of meta-awareness of arousal, a third level of inference, which may permit conscious awareness, learning about, and intentional regulation of lower-order sources of arousal. Practices emphasizing meta-awareness of arousal (like meditation) may therefore elicit some of their known benefits via improved arousal coherence. We suggest that arousal coherence is also likely to be associated with markers of adaptive functioning (like emotional awareness and self-regulatory capacities) and discuss mind-body practices that may increase coherence.

Digital Being: social media and the predictive mind

Social media is implicated today in an array of mental health concerns. While concerns around social media have become mainstream, little is known about the specific cognitive mechanisms underlying the correlations seen in these studies or why we find it so hard to stop engaging with these platforms when things obviously begin to deteriorate for us. New advances in computational neuroscience, however, are now poised to shed light on this matter. In this paper, we approach the phenomenon of social media addiction through the lens of the active inference framework. According to this framework, predictive agents like us use a 'generative model' of the world to predict our own incoming sense data and act to minimize any discrepancy between the prediction and incoming signal (prediction error). In order to live well and be able to act effectively to minimize prediction error, it is vital that agents like us have a generative model, which not only accurately reflects the regularities of our complex environment but is also flexible and dynamic and able to stay accurate in volatile and turbulent circumstances. In this paper, we propose that some social media platforms are a spectacularly effective way of warping an agent's generative model and of arresting the model's ability to flexibly track and adapt to changes in the environment. We go on to investigate cases of digital tech, which do not have these adverse effects and suggest-based on the active inference framework-some ways to understand why some forms of digital technology pose these risks, while others do not.

Moral considerability of brain organoids from the perspective of computational architecture

Human brain organoids equipped with complex cytoarchitecture and closed-loop feedback from virtual environments could provide insights into neural mechanisms underlying cognition. Yet organoids with certain cognitive capacities might also merit moral consideration. A precautionary approach has been proposed to address these ethical concerns by focusing on the epistemological question of whether organoids possess neural structures for morally-relevant capacities that bear resemblance to those found in human brains. Critics challenge this similarity approach on philosophical, scientific, and practical grounds but do so without a suitable alternative. Here, I introduce an architectural approach that infers the potential for cognitive-like processing in brain organoids based on the pattern of information flow through the system. The kind of computational architecture acquired by an organoid then informs the kind of cognitive capacities that could, theoretically, be supported and empirically investigated. The implications of this approach for the moral considerability of brain organoids are discussed.

To be or not to be: The active inference of suicide

Suicide presents an apparent paradox as a behavior whose motivation is not obvious since its outcome is non-existence and cannot be experienced. To address this paradox, we propose to frame suicide in the integrated theory of stress and active inference. We present an active inference-based cognitive model of suicide as a type of stress response hanging in cognitive balance between predicting self-preservation and self-destruction. In it, self-efficacy emerges as a meta-cognitive regulator that can bias the model toward either survival or suicide. The model suggests conditions under which cognitive homeostasis can override physiological homeostasis in motivating self-destruction. We also present a model proto-suicidal behavior, programmed cell death (apoptosis), in active inference terms to illustrate how an active inference model of self-destruction can be embodied in molecular mechanisms and to offer a hypothesis on another puzzle of suicide: why only humans among brain-endowed animals are known to practice it.

Aesthetics and predictive processing: grounds and prospects of a fruitful encounter

In the last few years, a remarkable convergence of interests and results has emerged between scholars interested in the arts and aesthetics from a variety of perspectives and cognitive scientists studying the mind and brain within the predictive processing (PP) framework. This convergence has so far proven fruitful for both sides: while PP is increasingly adopted as a framework for understanding aesthetic phenomena, the arts and aesthetics, examined under the lens of PP, are starting to be seen as important windows into our mental functioning. The result is a vast and fast-growing research programme that promises to deliver important insights into our aesthetic encounters as well as a wide range of psychological phenomena of general interest. Here, we present this developing research programme, describing its grounds and highlighting its prospects. We start by clarifying how the study of the arts and aesthetics encounters the PP picture of mental functioning (§1). We then go on to outline the prospects of this encounter for the fields involved: philosophy and history of art (§2), psychology of aesthetics and neuroaesthetics (§3) and psychology and neuroscience more generally (§4). The upshot is an ambitious but well-defined framework within which aesthetics and cognitive science can partner up to illuminate crucial aspects of the human mind. This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'.

Mindfulness meditation and psychedelics: potential synergies and commonalities

There has been increasing scientific and clinical interest in studying psychedelic and meditation-based interventions in recent years, both in the context of improving mental health and as tools for understanding the mind. Several authors suggest neurophysiological and phenomenological parallels and overlaps between psychedelic and meditative states and suggest synergistic effects of both methods. Both psychedelic-assisted therapy and meditation training in the form of mindfulness-based interventions have been experimentally validated with moderate to large effects as alternative treatments for a variety of mental health problems, including depression, addictions, and anxiety disorders. Both demonstrated significant post-acute and long-term decreases in clinical symptoms and enhancements in well-being in healthy participants, in addition. Postulated shared salutogenic mechanisms, include, among others the ability to alter self-consciousness, present-moment awareness and antidepressant action via corresponding neuromodulatory effects. These shared mechanisms between mindfulness training and psychedelic intervention have led to scientists theorizing, and recently demonstrating, positive synergistic effects when both are used in combination. Research findings suggest that these two approaches can complement each other, enhancing the positive effects of both interventions. However, more theoretical accounts and methodologically sound research are needed before they can be extended into clinical practice. The current review aims to discuss the theoretical rationale of combining psychedelics with mindfulness training, including the predictive coding framework as well as research findings regarding synergies and commonalities between mindfulness training and psychedelic intervention. In addition, suggestions how to combine the two modalities are provided.

Special Issue: Experiencing Well-BeingPlayfulness and the meaningful life: an active inference perspective

Our paper takes as its starting point the recent proposal, at the core of this special issue, to use the active inference framework (AIF) to computationally model what it is for a person to live a meaningful life. In broad brushstrokes, the AIF takes experiences of human flourishing to be the result of predictions and uncertainty estimations along many dimensions at multiple levels of neurobiological organization. Our aim in this paper is to explain how AIF models predict that uncertainty can sometimes, under the right conditions, be conducive to the experiences of flourishing. Our focus is on playfulness, because playful individuals have learned a high-level prior that in certain safe contexts, uncertainty and error should be tolerated and explored. They have expanded the phenotypic bound on the amount of surprise they are prepared to tolerate in their lives. The positive embracing of uncertainty has a number of positive knock-on effects for the kind of lives playful individuals are able to lead. First, a playful individual attends to the world in a way that is open and expansive, a mode of attending that is effortless and therefore conducive to being in the present. This openness to the present moment allows for deep engagement and participation in experience that can furnish a renewed appreciation for life. Second, playful individuals will actively seek out spaces at the edge of their own abilities and will therefore be more likely to grow and develop in their skills and relationships in ways that contribute to their living a good life. Finally, playful agents seek out situations in which they can monitor, observe, and learn from their own affective responses to uncertainty. Thus, uncertainty becomes something familiar to them that they not only learn to tolerate but also enjoy positively exploring, in ways that provide them opportunities to grow. For these three reasons, we will argue that playfulness and openness to experiences of uncertainty and the unknown may be important ingredients in human flourishing.

Resilience and active inference

In this article, we aim to conceptualize and formalize the construct of resilience using the tools of active inference, a new physics-based modeling approach apt for the description and analysis of complex adaptive systems. We intend this as a first step toward a computational model of resilient systems. We begin by offering a conceptual analysis of resilience, to clarify its meaning, as established in the literature. We examine an orthogonal, threefold distinction between meanings of the word "resilience": (i) inertia, or the ability to resist change (ii) elasticity, or the ability to bounce back from a perturbation, and (iii) plasticity, or the ability to flexibly expand the repertoire of adaptive states. We then situate all three senses of resilience within active inference. We map resilience as inertia onto high precision beliefs, resilience as elasticity onto relaxation back to characteristic (i.e., attracting) states, and resilience as plasticity onto functional redundancy and structural degeneracy.

Joining with the Conversation: Research as a Sustainable Practice in the Sport Sciences

What would it mean to consider research in the sport sciences as a sustainable practice? Taking a step back, in such a context, what would sustainability even mean? The time is ripe to address such questions, and what we lay out here are our initial thoughts on this most contemporary of issues. We start by exploring what is meant by the term ‘sustainability’. Rather than following mainstream thinking—the harnessing of earthly resources commodified and exploited as ‘renewables’—we situate it in the sport sciences as a continuing response-ability to the experiences of others. This view is rooted in ‘commoning’—an intransitive verb in which people conjoin varied experiences through correspondence. What makes this sustainable, is its ongoing open-endedness; meaning, it carries on as people (co)respond to one another. Central to this idea is a perceptual system attuned to the ebbs and flows of what or who one is corresponding with. Though, the current modus operandi of research in the sport sciences is located, not on the skilled perception of the scientist corresponding with the coming-into-being of phenomena, but on an unsustainable model of recognition that views phenomena as ‘objects of analysis’, fixed and final in form, waiting to be known about by means of reduction, fragmentation and classification. For research in the sport sciences to become a sustainable practice, we propose a scholarship that prioritises direct observation and participation with what holds our attention, corresponding within its natural ecology of relations, embedding the phenomenon itself. This re-conceptualisation of science views research as a response-able scholarship grounded in conversation. Like inquiring about the well-being of loved ones, what sustains such a scholarship is curiosity, care and hope—a curiosity about which captivates us, a care that sees us respond to what we observe, and a hope of carrying the correspondence on, together.

Beauty and Uncertainty as Transformative Factors: A Free Energy Principle Account of Aesthetic Diagnosis and Intervention in Gestalt Psychotherapy

Drawing from field theory, Gestalt therapy conceives psychological suffering and psychotherapy as two intentional field phenomena, where unprocessed and chaotic experiences seek the opportunity to emerge and be assimilated through the contact between the patient and the therapist (i.e., the intentionality of contacting). This therapeutic approach is based on the therapist’s aesthetic experience of his/her embodied presence in the flow of the healing process because (1) the perception of beauty can provide the therapist with feedback on the assimilation of unprocessed experiences; (2) the therapist’s attentional focus on intrinsic aesthetic diagnostic criteria can facilitate the modification of rigid psychopathological fields by supporting the openness to novel experiences. The aim of the present manuscript is to review recent evidence from psychophysiology, neuroaesthetic research, and neurocomputational models of cognition, such as the free energy principle (FEP), which support the notion of the therapeutic potential of aesthetic sensibility in Gestalt psychotherapy. Drawing from neuroimaging data, psychophysiology and recent neurocognitive accounts of aesthetic perception, we propose a novel interpretation of the sense of beauty as a self-generated reward motivating us to assimilate an ever-greater spectrum of sensory and affective states in our predictive representation of ourselves and the world and supporting the intentionality of contact. Expecting beauty, in the psychotherapeutic encounter, can help therapists tolerate uncertainty avoiding impulsive behaviours and to stay tuned to the process of change.