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Pain Asymbolia as Depersonalization for Pain Experience. An Interoceptive Active Inference Account
1Department of Philosophy, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
Frontiers in Psychology
|November 16, 2020
Summary
Mineness, the sense of subjective presence, arises from interoceptive active inference modeling the self. This is disrupted in pain asymbolia, where pain is not felt as "mine".
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
- Philosophy of Mind
Background:
- Mineness, or subjective presence, is the feeling that experiences belong to a continuous self.
- This sense of self is crucial for understanding affective experiences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose that mineness is generated by interoceptive active inference.
- To explain how the anterior insula cortex contributes to affective self-modeling.
- To apply this model to understand pain asymbolia.
Main Methods:
- Theoretical modeling of interoceptive active inference.
- Analysis of the role of the anterior insula cortex in self-representation.
- Application of the model to clinical conditions like pain asymbolia.
Main Results:
- Mineness is proposed to emerge from hierarchical predictive processing, specifically interoceptive active inference.
- The anterior insula cortex is identified as a key neural hub for affective self-modeling.
- Pain asymbolia is characterized as a loss of mineness for pain, where bodily damage signals are not attributed to the self.
Conclusions:
- Interoceptive active inference provides a framework for understanding the generation of mineness.
- Disruptions in this process, particularly involving the anterior insula, can lead to conditions like pain asymbolia.
- This model offers a novel perspective on depersonalization phenomena related to affective experience.
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