Mindfulness meditation / body-focused contemplative training

Treated at length in Farb et al. (2015) as the most prominent Western introduction of interoceptive training, and analyzed through the paper’s predictive-coding framework: mindfulness is hypothesized to shift regulatory habit from active-inference toward perceptual-inference by increasing sensory precision weighting relative to priors.

Seven proposed mechanisms

1. Enhanced sensitivity — domain-specific (e.g., breath sensitivity: Daubenmier et al. 2013; somatic-signal detection: Mirams et al. 2013), not a domain-general boost to heartbeat-detection accuracy (Khalsa et al. 2008; Parkin et al. 2013). Framed as a shift in interoceptive attention deployment (“embodied ethic”) rather than raw sensitivity enhancement.
2. Enhanced non-reactivity — via precision weighting: attention shifts finite resources toward representing/exploring PEs rather than defending priors, supporting decentering/reperceiving (viewing thoughts as transient mental events).
3. Enhanced regulation — a decentered, metacognitive vantage from which multiple appraisal options (not just the most prepotent one) become available.
4. Enhanced insight — a richer corpus of interoceptive data over time supports recognizing contingencies between triggers, bodily responses, appraisals, and emotions.
5. Enhanced presence and agency — see presence-and-agency; linked to increased motor control during perceptual-motor conflict and (in depression) normalized gait pattern and self-efficacy.
6. Increased positive experiences — e.g., mindful eating and reward-region engagement with palatable food; reduced responsiveness to drug cues correlating with reduced craving.
7. Embodied effects — posture (upright sitting linked to slowed respiration and decreased pain unpleasantness even in “sham meditation”), increased high-frequency heart-rate variability (parasympathetic activation).

The accuracy caveat

Despite meditators’ subjective sense of heightened body awareness, laboratory heartbeat-detection accuracy is not reliably elevated by mindfulness training — an explicit tension the paper surfaces and that motivates its broader interoceptive-taxonomy. See does-mindfulness-enhance-interoceptive-accuracy.