Abstract
Despite the coherence and seeming directness of our bodily experience, our perception of the world, including that of our own body, may constitute an inference based on ambiguous sensory data and prior expectations. In this article, I apply a 'psychologised' version of the recently proposed free energy framework to the understanding of certain disorders of neurological unawareness in order to examine how inferential processes may determine our body perception. I specifically consider three facets of body perception in such disorders: namely, the 'external body' as inferred on the basis of exteroceptive signals and related predictions; the 'internal body' as inferred on the basis of proprioceptive and interoceptive signals and related predictions; and lastly the 'impersonalised body' as inferred on the basis of signals from social and third-person perspectives on the body and related predictions. Several conclusions will be drawn from these considerations: (a) there is a deep interdependency of prior beliefs and sensory data; as the brain uses sensory data to update its virtual model of the world, lack or imprecision of sensory prediction errors may lead to aberrant inferences influenced disproportionally by outdated, premorbid predictions; (b) interoception and interoceptive salience have a unique role in our inferences about body awareness and (c) social, 'objectified' prior beliefs about the body may have a silent but potent role in our bodily self-awareness. Finally, the article emphasizes that our learned, virtual model of the body is depended on the nature and thus integrity of the very body that allowed the model to be formed in the first place.
Highlights
Introduction: the ‘here and now’ as inferenceRemembering the past, and being able to project oneself in the future, allows the mind to escape the psychological ‘here and now’ of experience
Despite the coherence and seeming directness of our bodily experience, our perception of the world, including that of our own body, may constitute an inference based on ambiguous sensory data and prior expectations
Several conclusions will be drawn from these considerations: (a) there is a deep interdependency of prior beliefs and sensory data; as the brain uses sensory data to update its virtual model of the world, lack or imprecision of sensory prediction errors may lead to aberrant inferences influenced disproportionally by outdated, premorbid predictions; (b) interoception and interoceptive salience have a unique role in our inferences about body awareness and (c) social, ‘objectified’ prior beliefs about the body may have a silent but potent role in our bodily self-awareness
Summary
Remembering the past, and being able to project oneself in the future, allows the mind to escape the psychological ‘here and now’ of experience. The autobiographical incidents that we experience as veridical, coherent and self-defining are frequently unconscious collages of previous recollective attempts, fragments of experienced events, currents thoughts and long term goals (Conway, 2005). In this sense, we have come to understand our autobiographical self as actively, yet unconsciously inferred on the basis of imperfect memory data and current expectations. Despite the coherence and seeming directness of our experience, our perception of the world may constitute an inference based on ambiguous sensory data and prior expectations (von Helmholtz, 1878/1971) This idea is less established, perhaps given its counterintuitive nature and complex, philosophical implications. I hope to demonstrate that the study of the pathologically exaggerated ways in which we may infer the experience of our own body, can provide insights into the mechanisms of normal perceptual and active inference, and the predictive and social nature of motor awareness
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