Internal World Research Articles

Hierarchical surprise signals in naturalistic violation of expectations

Abstract Surprise responses signal both high-level cognitive alerts that information is missing, and increasingly specific back-propagating error signals that allow updates in processing nodes. Studying surprise is, hence, central for cognitive neuroscience to understand internal world representations and learning. Yet, only few prior studies used naturalistic stimuli targeting our high-level understanding of the world. Here, we use magic tricks in an fMRI experiment to investigate neural responses to violations of core assumptions held by humans about the world. We showed participants naturalistic videos of three types of magic tricks, involving objects appearing, changing color, or disappearing, along with control videos without any violation of expectation. Importantly, the same videos were presented with and without prior knowledge about the tricks’ explanation. Results revealed generic responses in frontal and parietal areas, together with responses specific to each of the three trick types in posterior sensory areas. A subset of these regions, the midline areas of the default mode network (DMN), showed surprise activity that depended on prior knowledge. Equally, sensory regions showed sensitivity to prior knowledge, reflected in differing decoding accuracies. These results suggest a hierarchy of surprise signals involving generic processing of violation of expectations in frontal and parietal areas with concurrent surprise signals in sensory regions that are specific to the processed features.

Review of Edwin Malachi Vethamani’s Have I Got Something To Tell You (2024): A Celebration of Marginalised Identities

Malachi Edwin Vethamani’s latest short story collection Have I Got Something to Tell You (2024) published by Penguin Books gives voice to the marginalised and insight into their internal worlds. As with his other collections, both short stories and poetry, Vethamani writes about complex human emotions. Consisting of a mix of old and new short stories, this collection explores a range of topics from gender and sexuality to race with a mix of wit and Vethamani’s characteristic minimalist writing style, peopled with memorable, intriguing, and well-written characters.

The integration of expressive languages for childhood education

The recovery of the importance of school, after the suspension due to the covid emergency, sees at the centre of the training activities those that make children active subjects, capable of interacting concretely and creatively. The object of this paper is to describe some elements of how the integration of artistic languages, such as dance-movement, narration, and pictorial-plastic production, represents a significant contribution in this direction as a “left hand pedagogy” centred on imagination and creativity. At the basis of every expressive production there is the creative process that concerns and makes possible the development of our inner world and the increasingly awareness of the perception of the uniqueness of one's own being. These processes are enhanced and implemented by the suitably proposed integration of different languages. In this paper, the above synthetically outlined, I will be discussing a specific method of dance-movement-therapy proposed with a pedagogical method, defined in Italy as symbolic-anthropological. It is an approach tested in different contexts and schools of all levels, in which the different expressive possibilities are proposed in a fluid way in relation to a symbolic theme and to an educational objective. In the workshops in which the positivity of these activities was assessed, it emerged how those activities were particularly appropriate to children's needs. For kindergarten children, the immersive activities of movement, dance, drawing and storytelling, interactively integrated with each other, support: the process of inhabiting the body, perceptive discrimination, the possibility of putting order in one's emotions, the processes connected to the symbolic function and the gradual adaptation to reality. Furthermore, with primary school children, the activities satisfy, among other things, the need to give shape to one's internal world, as well as the need for competence and emotional channelling.

Shifting reliance between the internal and external world: A meta-analysis on visual-working memory use.

Visual working memory (VWM) is a fundamental cognitive capacity that allows us to temporarily hold visual information, but storage is effortful and content-fragile. Rather than loading VWM to the maximum, individuals usually rely on the external world and access information just in time. However, participants do rely on VWM more as access costs to external information increase. This phenomenon is commonly investigated with so-called copy tasks, which differ across paradigms, manipulations, and dependent variables. We here present findings of a meta-analysis into the reliability and consistency of shifts in the assumed trade-off between storing and sampling across manipulations and dependent variables, using data from 28 experiments. We found that all cost manipulations led to substantial shifts from external sampling to storage in VWM. Cost manipulations did not differ in their effect across studies even though such differences are reported within studies. All dependent variables were associated with clear but different strong effects. We argue that the differences observed between indicators are not only due to sensitivity differences but also due to differential aspects of behavior that are measured. New variables and techniques might now pave the way to understanding the trade-off between storing and sampling more in-depth. Collectively, our findings suggest that the reliance on VWM or the external world shifts consistently as access cost is increased, is largely irrespective of cost manipulations, and expresses itself reliably across dependent variables. With this work, we seek to help establish standards and comparability across this growing body of work.

EchoPT: A Pretrained Transformer Architecture That Predicts 2D In-Air Sonar Images for Mobile Robotics.

The predictive brain hypothesis suggests that perception can be interpreted as the process of minimizing the error between predicted perception tokens generated via an internal world model and actual sensory input tokens. When implementing working examples of this hypothesis in the context of in-air sonar, significant difficulties arise due to the sparse nature of the reflection model that governs ultrasonic sensing. Despite these challenges, creating consistent world models using sonar data is crucial for implementing predictive processing of ultrasound data in robotics. In an effort to enable robust robot behavior using ultrasound as the sole exteroceptive sensor modality, this paper introduces EchoPT (Echo-Predicting Pretrained Transformer), a pretrained transformer architecture designed to predict 2D sonar images from previous sensory data and robot ego-motion information. We detail the transformer architecture that drives EchoPT and compare the performance of our model to several state-of-the-art techniques. In addition to presenting and evaluating our EchoPT model, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this predictive perception approach in two robotic tasks.

Making ourselves understood: Translation as a creative task

Human evolution in groups has given us language. But it has also led to a present where it appears increasingly difficult to understand each other. Language can be used to clarify or to obscure; it can unite or separate. It is as if we speak different languages. (This is written in English as my own second language as a German.) Can thinking about actual linguistic differences help? A foreign language can be a barrier to communication—and learning or translating the language can become a bridge. Similarly, on a personal level (and in psychotherapy), a second language can be used defensively, when it creates a distance to the internal world—and it can be used creatively to rethink it. Group analysis in particular is faced with this dual potential, when members do not all share the same background. Foulkes himself had to struggle with the English language, and (I suggest) turned the challenge into an opportunity for creative new ideas. Foulkes’s concept of translation embodies this creativity and carries it into the group-analytic model. This specific Foulkesian translation originates in the group-analytic situation and goes beyond the polarity of the passively translated and the active translator. The mutual task is unavoidable in our polyphonic international group of GASi.

Exploring indigenous adoptees’ stories of reconnection after adoption through the lens of the indigenous connectedness framework

The Indigenous Connectedness Framework (ICF) describes mechanisms that help or hinder Indigenous children’s development of family, community, environmental, intergenerational, and cultural/spiritual connectedness, or belonging, and healthy identity. It has been applied in considerations of child welfare system-involved youth and alumni and studies of Indigenous mental health, but not yet to Indigenous adoptees who may not have experienced child welfare involvement prior to adoption and are reconnecting to their origins as adults. Although various factors influence the extent of (re)connectedness, Indigenous adoptees’ reunification with biological family, community, land/place, ancestors, and culture is generally linked with increases in their senses of connectedness, or belonging, and Indigenous/Tribal identity. To gain initial insights into the suitability of the ICF to describe components of Indigenous adoptee (re)connectedness, this study used a Two-Eyed Seeing approach with Indigenous storytelling and narrative inquiry methodologies to explore experiences and perceptions of reunification with four Indigenous adults who experienced adoption by non-Indigenous families as children and were raised in non-Indigenous communities. Stories about reconnection with family, community, and land/place after adoption, as well as stories of perceived supports for, and challenges of, reunification were obtained during conversational interviews conducted via Zoom or phone and then mapped onto the ICF. Disconnectedness mechanisms, (re)connectedness mechanisms, and themes related to adoptees’ internal worlds and resilience, relational identity development, and contributions to intergenerational connectedness were revealed. Suggested pathways for social work to support (re)connectedness or belonging for Indigenous adoptees and implications for future research are provided.

Evaluating state-based network dynamics in anhedonia

Anhedonia is a transdiagnostic clinical syndrome associated with significant clinical impairment. In spite of this, a clear network-level characterization of anhedonia does not yet exist. The present study addressed this gap in the literature by taking a graph theoretical approach to characterizing state-based (i.e., reward anticipation, rest) network dynamics in a transdiagnostic sample of adults with clinically significant anhedonia (n = 77). Analyses focused on three canonical brain networks: the Salience Network (SN), the Default Mode Network (DMN) and the Central Executive Network (CEN), with hypotheses focusing on the role of saliency-mapping in anhedonia. Contrary to hypotheses, no significant relation was found between the SN and anhedonia symptom severity. Exploratory results revealed a significant association between anhedonia severity and DMN reorganization from rest to reward anticipation. Specifically, greater anhedonia severity was associated with less reward-related reorganization. This finding suggests that anhedonia severity may be associated with DMN hyposensitivity, such that individuals with more severe anhedonia may have a difficult time disengaging from their internal world in the context of potentially rewarding experiences. Although preliminary, this finding challenges the centrality of the SN in anhedonia severity and suggests the importance of the DMN. Clinical implications and future directions are explored.

Analysis of Fu Caiyun's “Dissolute Beauty” and Zeng Pu's “Struggle Between Two Minds” ：A Study Based on Bakhtin's Polyphony in Perspective

Fu Caiyun, the “Reckless Beauty”, is the most complex artistic character created by Zeng Pu in Sinful Sea Flowers, which has received mixed reviews from academics. The reason for the controversy is the obvious polyphony of Sinful Sea Flowers. Zeng Pu does not narrate Fu Caiyun's story with the absolute authority of the author, Fu Caiyun has a subjective position in the novel, and she expresses her own voice and forms a double-subject dialogue with the author Zeng Pu's voice. Thus Fu Caiyun becomes a “Reckless beauty” with polyphonic characteristics in Sinful Sea Flowers. The polyphony of “Reckless Beauty” is the result of Zeng Pu's “two minds struggle” with the historical and cultural context in which he lives. The blending of “new” and “old” identities, the cultural dialogue between “Chinese” and “Western” influences are internal conflicts that impacted Zeng Pu's rewriting of Fu Caiyun, rendering her character with a polyphonic nature of multiple voices. The text is filled with dialogues between Zeng Pu's “self”' and the “other” Fu Caiyun. Essentially, this represents a double-voiced polyphony of Zeng Pu's conscious and unconscious minds, embodying the “struggle between two minds” within his internal subjective world.

The conductor model of consciousness, our neuromorphic twins, and the human-AI deal

AbstractCritics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) posit that artificial agents cannot achieve consciousness even in principle, because they lack certain necessary pre-conditions present in biological agents. Here we highlight arguments from a neuroscientific and neuromorphic engineering perspective as to why such a strict denial of consciousness in artificial agents is not compelling. Based on the construction of a co-evolving neuromorphic twin, we argue that the differences between a developing biological and artificial brain are not fundamental and are vanishing with progress in neuromorphic architecture designs mimicking the human blueprint. To characterise this blueprint, we propose the Conductor Model of Consciousness (CMoC) that builds on neuronal implementations of an external and internal world model, while gating and labelling information flows. An extended turing test lists functional and neuronal correlates of biological consciousness that are captured by the CMoC. These correlates provide the grounding for how biological or artificial agents learn to distinguish between sensory activity generated from outside or inside of the brain, how the perception of these activities can itself be learned, and how the information flow for learning an internal world model is orchestrated by a cortical meta-instance, which we call the conductor. Perception comes with the distinction of sensory and affective components, with the affective component linking to ethical questions that are inherent in our multidimensional model of consciousness. Recognizing the existence of a blueprint for a possible artificial consciousness encompasses functional, neuronal and ethical dimensions, begging the question: How should we behave towards agents that are akin to us in the inner workings of their brains? We sketch a human-AI deal, balancing the growing cognitive abilities of artificial agents, and the possibility to relieve them from suffering of negative affects, with a protection for the rights of humans.

The hidden and the seen: Art as an intersubjective medium

ABSTRACT This paper explores the intersection of art and psychoanalysis, specifically the various ways in which the introduction of works of art into treatment can open pathways of intersubjective exploration and understanding of the patient’s unconscious processes that may have been otherwise hidden. Similar to the function of dreams and free association in psychoanalysis, a patient’s connection and identification with specific works of art may illuminate aspects of their unconscious organizing activity, or simply reiterate and re-confirm already-discovered dynamics of their internal world. Art in this context acts as an intersubjective medium through which associations from both the analyst and the analysand reflect one another and reveal deeper interpretations. This topic is explored by way of a clinical vignette in which the patient’s love for a particular painting opens up associations for both the patient and the analyst, areas of exploration that lead into deeper realms of the patient’s internalized relational world and his exhibitionism. Although the patient in this vignette has had significant experience with psychoanalysis, elusive areas of unconsciousness remain. His associations to his favorite painting by the Renaissance painter Giorgione and the analyst’s own associations to the painting help to illuminate hidden sectors of the patient’s unconscious processes, including how his developmental longing for admiration is in direct contradiction to his felt need to remain hidden, and how this conflict expresses itself in his exhibitionism.

Psychoanalysis and homosexuality: The relevance of homophobia and shame for all sexualities

This article will describe some contemporary developments in psychoanalytic thinking about sexuality, from a post‐heteronormative standpoint. Psychoanalytic theorising of homosexuality had been generally homophobic for decades, reflecting society stereotypes. Previously, many analysts prescribed treatment to convert “the homosexual patient” to “healthy heterosexuality”, which Freud had regarded as likely to be unsuccessful. The author argues that psychoanalysis, having been part of the “disease” of homophobia, and the lengthy shadow cast by shame, can also contribute to its “cure” by promoting a broader understanding of the conscious and unconscious nature of desire and identity. The author considers the central role played by the superego in maintaining shame’s dominance and explores the impact of shame on time and temporality, including shame’s unique après coup nature. The struggle for acceptance of non‐heteronormative sexuality is discussed and contemporary developments in theorising desire, internalised homophobia, and Oedipus are explored. Drawing on fictional composite clinical vignettes, the author describes current challenges that clinicians face in relation to homophobia and shame, illustrating the central importance for clinicians to address where shame and homophobia lie within their own internal worlds and object relationships.

Lung cancer after the genomic turn: From the biopolitics of ‘lifestyle’ to the transcorporeality of breath

The lungs serve as a site of interchange between the bodily and environmental, an interface between the internal and external world, enacted through breath. We draw on the primacy of this exchange to explore the complexities of living with lung cancer amidst the enduring social challenge of stigma and the advent of ‘targeted therapies’ at the cutting edge of precision medicine. Lung cancer’s association with smoking and resulting stigmatisation of those with lung cancer has been well documented – positioning those with lung cancer as failed subjects of a biopolitics of lifestyle. However, recent developments in ‘precision medicine’ have drawn attention to alternate, genetic causes of lung cancer, disrupting easy equivalences between deviant cells (malignancy) and deviant conduct (smoking). Despite this, and drawing on interviews with 32 people receiving targeted therapy for lung cancer in Australia, we identify enduring resonances of deviance and stigma which still foreground individual lifestyle and blame, even for those – like many participants in this study – who have never smoked. Even in the context of uncertain causal origins and genetic mutations, the stigma of lung cancer and the figure of ‘the smoker’ as an object of abjection and disavowal persists. We find Alaimo’s concept of transcorporeality instructive for moving away from this biopolitics of lifestyle, toward greater recognition of the collective, though unequal, conditions of ‘carcinogenic capitalism’ in which we all must live and breathe. In turn, our analysis of the specificities of lung cancer may inform broader sociological approaches to tackle stigma at a structural level.

‘Like a rabbit in the headlights’: A psychoanalytically oriented exploration of performance anxiety in professional musicians

AbstractPerformance anxiety is a significant professional problem among musicians. A psychoanalytically oriented qualitative research design was employed to explore the psychological realities of six professional musicians from various genres, including classical, folk, jazz, and crossover music. Each participant took part in three unstructured hour‐long interviews. Analysis focused on the integration of conscious and unconscious elements in order to provide some insight into participants' internal worlds. Three interrelated themes emerged from the data: 1. ‘The masquerade’, conveying the idea of a covering up of the visible signs of anxiety, and a simulation of confidence on stage; 2. ‘The lair of the beast’, describing the backdrop of the music industry, experienced as a threatening underworld; and 3. ‘The ghost’, reflecting a sense of the overhang of anxiety from earlier generations. Emergent themes were linked to psychoanalytic concepts, including Winnicott's concept of a false self and Freud's discussion of the uncanny. The multifaceted nature of performance anxiety, as evidenced in the material brought by participants in this study, is explored within the discussion. Directions for further research and clinical implications in relation to the culture of the music industry and working with performance anxiety in a psychotherapeutic context, are also outlined.

Positive events in psychotherapy: What do adolescents and young adults say is helpful?

Background The significant challenge in adolescent and young adult therapy lies in the fact that research in this field does not provide many clinical indications. This study addresses domains contributing to the establishment and sustenance of engagement, satisfaction, and progress among adolescents and young adults in their treatment by delving into the impact of events that, from the perspective of clients, have positively influenced their therapeutic process. Methods Employing a qualitative research approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 adolescents and young adults undergoing therapy, recounting positive and constructive events during their treatment. Results A structured thematic analysis revealed six primary domains of positive events: events linked to the management of the setting, events shaping the definition of therapy goals, occurrences tied to the therapist’s active role, collaborative events between therapists and clients, and events associated with both clients’ external and internal worlds. Conclusions The findings suggest that working with adolescents shares similarities with psychotherapy involving adult clients but demands specific attention to adolescents and young adults’ families, surrounding environment, and rapidly changing needs.

Umwelt-A New Strategy for Mentalizing Patient Experience.

There is an inevitable limit to understanding the internal experience of patients with whom therapists work in psychotherapy. The farther their experience is from that of their therapist, the more challenging this endeavor can be. Accepting that therapists cannot exactly know a patient's internal experience invites them to explore novel ways of appreciating another person's way of perceiving relationships, deriving meaning from them, and using their experience to motivate behavior. The concept of umwelt can be used as a metaphor to help therapists imagine the internal world of their patients, as shaped by patients' developmental, interpersonal, and traumatic experiences. Umwelt refers to the unique worldview created by a species' idiosyncratic perceptual organs and survival strategies. This first Psychotherapy Musings describes the concept of umwelt, applies it to the case of a patient with difficult-to-treat mental health problems, and explicates the benefit of this novel perspective.

‘An experiment with the self’: sensory experience, self-analysis, and object relations theory in Oliver Sacks’ A Leg to Stand On (1984)

ABSTRACT In 1974, neurologist Oliver Sacks was hiking alone in the Norwegian mountains when he severely injured his leg running from a bull. Better known for documenting his patients’ disorders and recovery processes, in the autobiographical A Leg to Stand On (1984) he instead maps the ensuing “chaos” of his own changed body and mind as he grapples with the alteration of core sensory experience and its impact on his sense of self. In this article, I showcase Sacks’ self-analytic narrative, demonstrating the value of reading accounts of sensory experiences of ill health via the lens of psychoanalytic object relations theory. I argue that this this approach can not only help us to see sensory and material experience as intimately tied up with one’s internal object world, but also allows us to understand illness narratives themselves as psychical objects in which authors, readers and critics may have complex investments.

Examination of a case of "treatment failure" in long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy for treatment-resistant depression.

Randomized controlled trials have reported psychoanalytic psychotherapy to improve longer-term post-treatment outcomes in patients with treatment-resistant depression. In this case study, we examine the therapy process of a female trial participant diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression. Structured clinical assessments indicated that the patient's level of depression remained unchanged during and after treatment. Over the course of the therapy, she repeatedly broke away from important others and finally also from the therapy itself, which we linked to the impact of earlier experiences of abandonment on her internal world. In the discussion, we present a variety of reflections that were put forward by the authors during a series of case discussion meetings. Some of these reflections relate to how the inner world of this patient might have triggered a negative therapeutic reaction and a destructive pattern of repetition. The interpretative stance, in which the therapist interpreted this reaction as indicative of a psychic conflict and linked this conflict to the therapeutic relationship, seemed to be experienced by the patient as unhelpful and persecutory. Other elements that were brought up include basic distrust, lack of symbolization and trauma in the patient, as well as the constraints of the research context.

The "Fact of the Matter": A Model for Working with Activated Internal Object Relations in Psychodynamic Couple Therapy.

Extensive clinical scholarship has described the application of object-relational principles, particularly the operation of projective identification, to psychodynamic psychotherapy with couples. The author explores the way in which a more complete depiction of projective processes, one that incorporates each partner's intrapersonal management of multiple internal object relations, interacting interpersonally in the couple therapy process, can explain the escalating cycles of conflict between couples that are elaborated in the family-systems literature, and be helpful in understanding the object-relational substrate of chronic conflict in couples more generally. A description of how to map each partner's internal object world through the identification of these cycles in the early couple therapy process is elaborated in a theoretical model and illustrated with case material.

A model linking emotional dysregulation in neurodivergent people to the proprioceptive impact of joint hypermobility.

Emotional feelings are putatively ascribed to central representation of bodily states in the context of expectation and uncertainty in both internal state and external world. Neurodivergent people are more likely to experience co-occurring mental health challenges, although mechanistic insights underpinning this association are scarce. We therefore undertook a study to test whether imprecise processing of proprioceptive error signals may underlie the connection between neurodivergence and emotional dysregulation. In a cohort of people with complex chronic conditions, including chronic pain/fatigue, and complex trauma, and in a comparison group, we assessed presence of neurodivergence, variant connective tissue manifested through joint hypermobility, and emotional dysregulation. We present a data-informed conceptual model showing that variant connective tissue determines whether proprioceptive surprise is linked with emotional dysregulation in neurodivergent individuals. We suggest that future research in this area may have important clinical implications for the interaction of mental and physical wellbeing in neurodivergent people. This article is part of the theme issue 'Sensing and feeling: an integrative approach to sensory processing and emotional experience'.