I overthink—Therefore I am not: An active inference account of altered sense of self and agency in depersonalisation disorder

Ciaunica, Anna; Seth, Anil K.; Limanowski, Jakub; Hesp, Casper; Friston, Karl J.

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2022.103320

Cited by 42 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 131 publications

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“…Traumatogenic dissociative symptomology manifests as severe distortions in how the bodily self is perceived and experienced in relation to the outside world and often corresponds with trauma during critical periods of sensorimotor development ( van der Hart et al, 2005 ; van der Kolk, 2005 ; Schmahl et al, 2010 ). Without adequate somatic sensory integration, we do not know where our body begins or where it ends; statements such as “I feel as if I am outside my body,” and “I feel like there is no boundary around my body,” highlight how alterations to the bodily self is a common experience in dissociative individuals ( Frewen and Lanius, 2015 ; Lanius et al, 2020 ; Ciaunica et al, 2021b , c ). Severe early life neurodevelopmental disruptions may also give rise to the experience of multiple fragmented, discontinuous, and disembodied selves, such as those experienced in dissociative identity disorder (DID), a condition highly co-existent with early and severe traumatization ( Reinders et al, 2003 ; Dorahy et al, 2014 ; Schlumpf et al, 2014 ; Reinders and Veltman, 2021 ).…”

Section: The Sense Of Self In Health and Trauma Through A Sensory Pro...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders

Kearney

Lanius

2022

Front. Neurosci.

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Although the manifestation of trauma in the body is a phenomenon well-endorsed by clinicians and traumatized individuals, the neurobiological underpinnings of this manifestation remain unclear. The notion of somatic sensory processing, which encompasses vestibular and somatosensory processing and relates to the sensory systems concerned with how the physical body exists in and relates to physical space, is introduced as a major contributor to overall regulatory, social-emotional, and self-referential functioning. From a phylogenetically and ontogenetically informed perspective, trauma-related symptomology is conceptualized to be grounded in brainstem-level somatic sensory processing dysfunction and its cascading influences on physiological arousal modulation, affect regulation, and higher-order capacities. Lastly, we introduce a novel hierarchical model bridging somatic sensory processes with limbic and neocortical mechanisms regulating an individual’s emotional experience and sense of a relational, agentive self. This model provides a working framework for the neurobiologically informed assessment and treatment of trauma-related conditions from a somatic sensory processing perspective.

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Section: The Sense Of Self In Health and Trauma Through A Sensory Pro...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders

Kearney

Lanius

2022

Front. Neurosci.

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“…In addition to the evidence on brain-heart interactions reflecting states-of-consciousness [77,[110][111][112]116], abundant experimental evidence shows that the integration of exteroceptive and interoceptive information, beyond the heart, relate to perceptual and self-awareness [73,[75][76][77][117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124]. The biomarkers of brain-heart interactions have a great potential to measure and understand the different dimensions leading to a subjective, conscious experience.…”

Section: Heart-shaped Brain Dynamics: From Interoception To Conscious...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain-heart interactions in the neurobiology of consciousness

Candia-Rivera¹

2022

Preprint

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Recent experimental evidence on patients with disorders of consciousness revealed that observing brain-heart interactions helps to detect residual consciousness, even in patients with absence of behavioral signs of consciousness. Those findings support hypotheses suggesting that visceral activity is involved in the neurobiology of consciousness, and sum to the existing evidence in healthy participants in which the neural responses to heartbeats reveal perceptual and self-consciousness. More evidence obtained through mathematical modeling of physiological dynamics revealed that emotion processing is prompted by an initial modulation from ascending vagal inputs to the brain, followed by sustained bidirectional brain-heart interactions. Those findings support long-lasting hypotheses on the causal role of bodily activity in emotions, feelings, and potentially consciousness. In this paper, the theoretical landscape on the potential role of heartbeats in cognition and consciousness is reviewed, as well as the experimental evidence supporting these hypotheses. I advocate for methodological developments on the estimation of brain-heart interactions to uncover the role of the heart in the origin, levels, and contents of consciousness. The ongoing evidence depicts interactions further than the cortical responses evoked by each heartbeat, suggesting the potential presence of non-linear, complex, and bidirectional communications between brain and heartbeat dynamics. Further developments on methodologies to analyze brain-heart interactions may contribute to a better understanding of the physiological dynamics involved in homeostatic-allostatic control, cognitive functions, and consciousness.

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“…Experimental evidence of FP aligns closely to traditional 'forwardmodels' of hallucinations; disruptions to highly tuned proprioceptive bodily sensationssuch as feedforward motor signalling [93] -may play a central role in FP. Recent work in the field of interoceptive modelling may also provide a more specific framework to examine whether distorted interoceptive processing and integration may lead to an increased sensitivity to experience FP [94][95].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Felt Presence experience: From cognition to the clinic

Barnby¹,

Park²,

Baxter³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The Felt Presence (FP) experience is the basic feeling that someone else is present in the immediate environment, without any other clear sensory evidence. Ranging from benevolent to distressing, personified to ambiguous, FP has been observed in neuropsychological case studies, within psychosis and paranoia, associated with sleep paralysis, anxiety, and recorded within endurance sports and spiritualist communities. In this review we summarise the philosophical and phenomenological, clinical and non-clinical correlates of FP, as well current measurement using psychometric, cognitive, and neurophysiological methods. We present current mechanistic explanations for FP, suggest a unifying cognitive framework for the phenomenon, and discuss outstanding questions for the field. FP offers a sublime window of opportunity to understand the cognitive neuroscience of own-body awareness and social agency detection; an intuitive, but poorly understood experience in health and disorder.

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I overthink—Therefore I am not: An active inference account of altered sense of self and agency in depersonalisation disorder

Cited by 42 publications

References 131 publications

The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders

The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders

Brain-heart interactions in the neurobiology of consciousness

The Felt Presence experience: From cognition to the clinic

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