Interoceptive inference
Introduced/crystallized by Seth (with Critchley, Friston, Hohwy) and given its canonical statement in Seth (2013). The claim: emotions are the integrated content of hierarchical top-down interoceptive predictions that counterflow with bottom-up interoceptive prediction errors, computed within a salience network anchored on the anterior insular cortex (AIC) and anterior cingulate.
Relation to appraisal theory
Interoceptive inference is explicitly framed as the predictive-coding generalization of cognitive-appraisal theories. Appraisal says: emotion = physiological change + cognitive interpretation of it. Interoceptive inference reframes “interpretation” as Bayesian inference on the hidden causes of interoceptive signals. So James–Lange, Schachter–Singer, and Damasio/Craig become special or partial cases within a single predictive scheme.
Two ways to reduce interoceptive prediction error
- Perceptual/model updating — change the generative model to fit incoming visceral evidence. Farb et al. (2015) elaborate this route into perceptual-inference, giving it a full clinical/contemplative treatment (mapped onto acceptance and equanimity) that Seth’s original paper left comparatively underspecified.
- active-inference — engage autonomic reflexes to change bodily state so it matches the prediction. This requires transient low precision (attenuated attention) on interoceptive prediction errors, otherwise they would revise the model instead of driving autonomic action.
Applied extension: the simulation map
Farb et al. (2015) build a clinical/contemplative superstructure on top of this framework, proposing the simulation-map as the operative construct closest to interoceptive awareness (distinct from raw sensation), and extending Seth’s presence-and-agency constructs so that presence is reachable via perceptual inference and not only active inference. See mindfulness-interoceptive-training and interoceptive-training-clinical for the resulting wellbeing and clinical applications.
Empirical footholds
No direct confirmation yet, but: AIC encodes anticipated and prediction-error signals for pain, risk, itch, and social “feeling” outcomes; false cardiac feedback increases emotional salience and AIC activity; cardio-visual synchrony modulates the experience-of-body-ownership. Applied to psychopathology: anxiety, psychosis, alexithymia, and depersonalization (imprecise interoceptive predictions) as failures of interoceptive inference.
Contrast with predecessors
Damasio, Craig, and Critchley also ground selfhood in bodily representation, but treat the interoceptive hierarchy as largely bottom-up (an ascending posterior→anterior insular re-representation with a comparator at the apex); none formalize emotion as a top-down generative model of interoceptive causes. That is the distinction at the heart of feedforward-vs-predictive-interoception — where Craig’s own gesture toward “predictions of future feelings” (Craig 2009) marks how close, yet architecturally distinct, the two accounts are.