Researcher at a glance
- Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga
- Orientation: Contemplative neuroscience; predictive-coding models of interoception; integration of clinical and contemplative accounts of self-regulation
Key contributions
- Convened and led an interdisciplinary working group (neuroscience, clinical psychology, complementary/alternative medicine, Buddhist/contemplative studies) at the Mind and Life Institute (2013), producing the integrative framework in Farb et al. (2015).
- Proposed the ‘simulation map’ model of interoceptive representation, extending Seth’s interoceptive-inference framework with an explicit active-inference vs. perceptual-inference distinction.
- Mapped modern psychological emotion-regulation strategies onto active inference and contemplative strategies (acceptance, equanimity) onto perceptual inference, while explicitly flagging the classification as potentially controversial.
- Showed prospectively that elaborative/self-referential (mPFC) reactivity to sad mood predicts depressive relapse while sensory (visual) reactivity protects against it (Farb et al. 2011) — the clinical evidence underneath the sensory-vs-elaborative dual-mode framework the interoception work generalizes.
- Formalized the clinical model as a two-factor account of relapse vulnerability and tested it in an RCT (Farb et al. 2022): a STATIC, treatment-invariant sensory-deactivation biomarker plus a DYNAMIC, treatment-responsive prefrontal-reactivity biomarker (combined C = 0.86), with the prophylactic prefrontal mechanism shared across MBCT and Well-Being CT rather than mindfulness-specific.
- Senior author on the RCT sequel probing SELF-REFERENTIAL processing rather than mood reactivity (Wu, Livingston, Segal & Farb 2026): in the same trial cohort scanned during a self-referential encoding task, behavioural negative self-referential bias predicted concurrent symptoms but NOT relapse, while somatosensory-deactivation and prefrontal (subgenual) markers predicted relapse — and in the combined model the SOMATOSENSORY markers dominated and the prefrontal marker dropped out, pushing the two-factor model past its prefrontal-centric framing toward ‘insufficient recruitment of somatosensory systems supporting embodied self-experience.’
- Founded the narrative-vs-experiential dual-mode framework the rest of his corpus rests on (Farb et al. 2007): the self extended across time (mPFC-centred) vs the momentary present-centred self (right viscerosomatic), habitually coupled and decoupled through mindfulness training. Later showed mindfulness training alters the cortical representation of interoceptive attention ([[farb-2013-training-interoceptive-cortex|Farb, Segal & Anderson 2013, SCAN]]: MBSR shifts interoceptive attention toward dorsal anterior insula and deactivates DMPFC, posterior-insula gain scaling with practice) — the training companion to the [[farb-2013-attentional-modulation|Cerebral Cortex attention paper]] of the same year.
- Showed empirically that mindfulness training alters the neural expression of sadness (Farb et al. 2010): trained participants recruit the right insula and viscerosomatic cortex under a dysphoric challenge where controls deactivate it, and insula recruitment tracks lower depression — the wiki’s one Farb datum where the protective sensory pole is INTEROCEPTIVE, not exteroceptive.
- Ran the wiki’s only trial manipulating interoceptive emphasis directly (Eusebio et al. 2022): two isomorphic yoga curricula differing only in whether instruction directs attention to bodily sensation. Both self-report hypotheses failed; the behavioural transfer hypothesis succeeded, and interoceptive sensibility moderated benefit in opposite directions across the two arms.
- From his Baycrest/Rotman dementia-lab period, provided the wiki’s one clinical ‘natural lesion’ test of the frontolimbic-integration framework (Farb et al. 2012, Cortex): resting-state fMRI in frontotemporal dementia shows frontolimbic disconnection PLUS prefrontal hyperconnectivity (‘prefrontal isolation’), with PFC hyperconnectivity tracking apathy and limbic disconnection tracking (loss of) disinhibition — the anterior insula’s integration of visceral/emotional information into behaviour watched in its failure mode.
- Senior author on a scalable digital-therapeutic mindfulness trial for exercise (Rai et al. 2026): a smartphone app raised interoceptive awareness and slightly raised high-intensity-exercise endurance versus an active cognitive-training control, but the awareness rise did not mediate or even correlate with the performance gain, and distress tolerance was the only factor tracking performance — the third of his group’s active-comparator trials where the interoceptive mechanism does not carry the result.
Key papers
- Eusebio et al. (2022) — Eusebio, Forbes, Sahyoun, Vago, Lazar & Farb (2022), Mental Health and Physical Activity 23:100483.
- Farb et al. (2013) — Farb, Segal & Anderson (2013), Cerebral Cortex 23(1):114-126. Attention selects which cortex represents the breath; the anterior insula is ‘not an area of pure body awareness.’
- Farb et al. (2010) — Farb, Anderson, Mayberg, Bean, McKeon & Segal (2010), Emotion 10(1):25-33.
- Farb et al. (2011) — Farb, Anderson, Bloch & Segal (2011), Biological Psychiatry 70(4):366-372.
- Farb et al. (2022) — Farb, Desormeau, Anderson & Segal (2022), NeuroImage: Clinical 34:102969.
- Wu et al. (2026) — Wu, Livingston, Segal & Farb (2026), NeuroImage: Clinical 51:104025. Senior author. Self-referential biomarkers of relapse in the same trial cohort as Farb (2022): somatosensory markers capture unique protective variance the prefrontal markers do not.
- Farb et al. (2015) — Farb, Daubenmier, Price, Gard, Kerr, Dunn, Klein, Paulus & Mehling (2015), Frontiers in Psychology.
- Farb et al. (2007) — Farb, Segal, Mayberg, Bean, McKeon, Fatima & Anderson (2007), SCAN 2(4):313-322. The founding narrative-vs-experiential dual-mode study.
- Farb et al. (2013) — Farb, Segal & Anderson (2013), SCAN 8(1):15-26. The training companion to the Cerebral Cortex attention paper: MBSR shifts interoceptive attention toward dorsal anterior insula and deactivates DMPFC, with posterior-insula gain scaling with practice dose.
- Farb et al. (2012) — Farb, Grady, Strother, Tang-Wai, Masellis, Black, Freedman, Pollock, Campbell, Hasher & Chow (2012), Cortex. Resting-state fMRI in frontotemporal dementia: ‘prefrontal isolation’ — frontolimbic disconnection with unconstrained prefrontal hyperconnectivity.
- Rai et al. (2026) — Rai, Bruel, Hood, Sabiston, Saab & Farb (2026), Mindfulness 17:335-349. A digital mindfulness therapeutic vs cognitive-training control for high-intensity exercise: interoceptive awareness rose but did not mediate a small endurance gain; distress tolerance did the tracking.
- Weng et al. (2020) — Weng, Lewis-Peacock, Hecht, Uncapher, Ziegler, Farb, Goldman, Skinner, Duncan, Chao & Gazzaley (2020), Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 14:336. Co-author (conceptualized the study): the EMBODY MVPA framework that decodes breath / mind-wandering / self-referential attention during meditation from fMRI. Applies the sensory-vs-narrative dyad his corpus rests on — the decoded ‘self-referential’ state is his narrative pole — through a decoder rather than a contrast.
Connections
Cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Toronto Mississauga, working at the intersection of mindfulness/contemplative practice and predictive-coding models of interoception. The 2015 paper anchoring this wiki’s second ingest (see Farb et al. (2015)) grew out of an April 2013 Mind and Life Institute meeting Farb organized with co-authors spanning neuroscience (Paulus), clinical/complementary medicine (Daubenmier, Price, Mehling, Kerr), and Buddhist/contemplative studies (Klein).
Central theoretical contribution
The Simulation map model: extending Seth’s Interoceptive inference into a dual-route regulatory framework — Active inference (act to change sensation, mapped onto suppression/distraction/reappraisal) vs. Perceptual inference (interoceptive) (update priors to match sensation, mapped onto contemplative acceptance/equanimity). Also extends Seth’s Presence and agency constructs, arguing presence is reachable via perceptual inference and not only active inference as originally proposed.
Clinical/applied focus
Distinct from the more purely theoretical Seth (2013), Farb’s work consistently pushes the predictive-coding framework toward testable clinical and wellbeing applications — see contemplative interoceptive training for well-being and Interoceptive training in clinical practice — while being notably cautious about overgeneralizing benefits (e.g., the explicit warning that interoceptive-awareness training can worsen symptoms in anorexia nervosa absent skillful guidance).
The interoceptive anchor: Farb et al. (2010)
Chronologically the earliest Farb data paper on the wiki (met third, after the 2011 and 2022 relapse papers). Farb, Anderson, Mayberg, Bean, McKeon & Segal (2010) compared MBSR completers with waitlisted controls during a sad-film provocation and found that, at equivalent felt sadness, trained participants recruit a right-lateralized viscerosomatic network — the right insula and subgenual ACC — where controls deactivate it, while both groups’ midline self-referential and left-language elaboration is reduced by training. The load-bearing correlation: right insula reactivity tracks lower depression (BDI r=-.465), and left language (Wernicke’s) reactivity tracks higher depression, with the two anticorrelated. This is the wiki’s only first-hand Farb evidence in which the protective sensory pole is genuinely interoceptive rather than exteroceptive — the exception to the caveat the 2011/2022 pages carry — bought at the price of a weaker, cross-sectional, between-groups design. See Perceptual inference (interoceptive), Decentering.
The relapse anchor: Farb et al. (2011)
The wiki’s first-met Farb data paper (the 2015 anchor is a theory piece). Farb, Anderson, Bloch & Segal (2011) followed remitted depressed patients for 18 months and found that reactivity to sad films in elaborative/self-referential medial prefrontal cortex predicts relapse, while reactivity in sensory (visual) cortex protects against it — an inverse trade-off, with felt sadness itself predicting nothing. This is the clinical proof-of-concept of the sensory-vs-elaborative distinction Farb later carries into interoception: the Perceptual inference (interoceptive) (sensory, accepting) vs. Active inference (elaborative, regulating) contrast, with a hard outcome attached. It also seats his collaboration with Segal and MBCT, and the Cognitive reactivity (to mood)/Decentering pair that runs through his contemplative work. The one caveat this wiki keeps visible: the protective sensory pole there is exteroceptive (vision), so the interoceptive reading is Farb’s generalization, not that paper’s finding.
The RCT sequel Farb et al. (2022) scans 85 patients before and after prophylactic therapy over a 2-year follow-up, and turns the 2011 correlation into the two-factor model: a static sensory-deactivation vulnerability that treatment does not move, and a dynamic prefrontal reactivity that it does. Two things there matter for the wiki’s reading of Farb: the sensory pole shifts from vision toward somatosensory/insular cortex (closer to interoception, still not landing on it), and the prefrontal prophylactic mechanism is trans-therapeutic — MBCT and Well-Being CT produced the same effect and the same null relapse difference — which tempers any claim that mindfulness/interoceptive training is the privileged route.
The fourth relapse paper, Wu et al. (2026) (Farb senior author), scans the same trial cohort during a self-referential encoding task rather than the sad film, and is the one that moves the two-factor model off its prefrontal centre. The static somatosensory-deactivation vulnerability replicates during self-processing; the treatment-responsive marker is now somatosensory (supramarginal activation rising in non-relapsers) rather than prefrontal; and in the combined survival model the somatosensory markers are the sole survivors while the subgenual prefrontal marker drops out. Its lesson for reading the corpus: the protective “sensory” pole Farb has tracked since 2007 is not incidental to the elaborative account but the part that carries the predictive weight — relapse vulnerability as “insufficient recruitment of somatosensory systems supporting embodied self-experience.” As with the whole arc, the sensory pole measured is somatosensory rather than interoceptive proper, so the interoceptive reading stays a generalization.
The one manipulation: Eusebio et al. (2022)
Every other Farb paper here is observational, quasi-experimental, or a comparison of two full therapies. Eusebio et al. (2022) is the only one that manipulates interoceptive emphasis itself, holding format, dose, instructor training and social contact constant across two yoga curricula. It is therefore the closest test in this wiki of Farb’s central applied claim.
The claim did not survive in the form it is usually stated. Interoceptive instruction did not raise self-reported interoception more than instruction that avoided mentioning the body, and it did not reduce symptoms more. What it did produce was behavioural transfer — better sustained attention on a task with no interoceptive content — moderated by interoceptive sensibility and by none of the six other traits measured.
Read alongside Farb et al. (2022), a pattern in this group’s two-armed trials becomes visible and is worth naming here rather than on either study page: when Farb’s interoceptive/mindfulness arm is compared against a serious active comparator rather than a waitlist, it does not win on the nominated outcome, while a mechanistic measure moves. In 2022 that was equal relapse rates with a shared prefrontal biomarker; in Eusebio et al. it is equal MAIA and symptom change with a differential attention transfer. This is not a criticism of the work — the trials are well designed and the nulls are reported plainly — but it is the wiki’s strongest reason to treat “interoceptive training works through interoception” as a hypothesis this group has repeatedly tested and not yet confirmed. See contemplative training increase objective interoceptive accuracy?, Yoga as interoceptive training.
The third instance, and the one that measured the mechanism: Rai et al. (2026)
Rai et al. (2026) extends the pattern above from two trials to three, and does so on the mechanism point most directly. A smartphone mindfulness therapeutic (the research predecessor of Mobio Interactive’s AmDTx) was tested against an active cognitive-training control for high-intensity cycling. As in 2022 and Eusebio, the comparator is serious rather than a waitlist; as in both, self-reported interoception (MAIA) moved as advertised. The nominated outcome — endurance — moved only slightly (β=0.21, p=0.041), and affective wellbeing during exercise did not move at all.
What makes this the cleanest of the three is that it measured a mediator and reported its failure. No preregistered candidate mechanism (mindfulness, attentional focus, mental toughness, mental/physical health) showed a group×time effect, so mediation could not run; and the raised interoceptive awareness was uncorrelated with the raised performance across individuals (MAIA↔TVE r=−0.02, ns). The factor that did track performance was effort and distress tolerance. So the reading Eusebio and 2022 support by inference — the benefit is not visibly the interoceptive component — Rai et al. support by direct test: interoceptive awareness rose, and it was inert with respect to the outcome. Note the standing conflict-of-interest here (a coauthor co-founds and holds ~21% of the app’s maker; Farb is an advisor with <1% stock), which the paper declares.
The clinical natural-lesion paper: Farb et al. (2012)
The wiki’s outlier among the Farb corpus — no mindfulness, no sad film, no breath. Farb et al. (2012) comes from his postdoctoral period at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute (senior collaborators Cheryl Grady, Tiffany Chow, Morris Freedman), and applies the same frontolimbic-integration framework to frontotemporal dementia via resting-state fMRI. Its value here is as the clinical mirror of the contemplative work: where the meditation papers show the anterior insula being recruited under emotional challenge, this shows disease disconnecting it, and names the behavioural cost — apathy tracks prefrontal hyperconnectivity, disinhibition needs the (now-severed) limbic channel. It is the wiki’s cleanest illustration that the anterior insula’s job of “integrating emotional and visceral information into representations of present-moment context that guide behaviour” (his own 2007 framing) is load-bearing: remove it and behaviour dysregulates in two dissociable directions. Read as a bridge between the interoception corpus and the DMN/salience network machinery, observed in its failure mode.
A provenance note
Farb was one of the three named reviewers of Payne, Levine & Crane-Godreau (2015), the wiki’s Somatic Experiencing paper — published the same year and in the same journal (Frontiers in Psychology) as his own contemplative-interoception framework, with which it shares a bottom-up, interoception-first orientation toward trauma and meditation. Recorded as a fact about the wiki’s provenance (its own author reviewed a source it holds), not as an endorsement of SE, which the wiki files as an evidence-free theory.