Review of Philosophy and Psychology
August 14, 2021
N. Nikolova, Peter Thestrup Waade, Karl Friston et al.
The mainstream science of consciousness offers a few predominate views of how the brain gives rise to awareness. Chief among these are the Higher Order Thought Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, and hybrids thereof. In parallel, rapid development in predictive processing approaches have begun to outline concrete mechanisms by which interoceptive inference...
Cerebral Cortex
June 10, 2021
Patricia Duerler, Silvia Brem, Gorka Fraga González et al.
64 citations
Abstract As source of sensory information, the body provides a sense of agency and self/non-self-discrimination. The integration of bodily states and sensory inputs with prior beliefs has been linked to the generation of bodily self-consciousness. The ability to detect surprising tactile stimuli is essential for the survival of an organism and for the formation of mental body representations....
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 10, 2019
Micah Allen, Andrew Levy, Thomas Parr et al.
100 citations
preprint
A growing body of evidence highlights the intricate linkage of exteroceptive perception to the rhythmic activity of the visceral body. In parallel, interoceptive inference theories of emotion and self-consciousness are on the rise in cognitive science. However, thus far no formal theory has emerged to integrate these twin domains; instead most extant work is conceptual in nature. Here, we...
Synthese
2018
Micah Allen, Karl Friston
387 citations
Predictive processing (PP) approaches to the mind are increasingly popular in the cognitive sciences. This surge of interest is accompanied by a proliferation of philosophical arguments, which seek to either extend or oppose various aspects of the emerging framework. In particular, the question of how to position predictive processing with respect to enactive and embodied cognition has become a...
Synthese
2018
Shaun Gallagher, Micah Allen
221 citations
We distinguish between three philosophical views on the neuroscience of predictive models: predictive coding (associated with internal Bayesian models and prediction error minimization), predictive processing (associated with radical connectionism and 'simple' embodiment) and predictive engagement (associated with enactivist approaches to cognition). We examine the concept of active inference...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Micah Allen, Jonathan Smallwood, Joanna Christensen et al.
100 citations
Self-generated thoughts unrelated to ongoing activities, also known as "mind-wandering," make up a substantial portion of our daily lives. Reports of such task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) predict both poor performance on demanding cognitive tasks and blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activity in the default mode network (DMN). However, recent findings suggest that TUTs and the DMN can also...
Journal of Neuroscience
October 31, 2012
Micah Allen, Martin Dietz, Karina S. Blair et al.
389 citations
Mindfulness meditation is a set of attention-based, regulatory, and self-inquiry training regimes. Although the impact of mindfulness training (MT) on self-regulation is well established, the neural mechanisms supporting such plasticity are poorly understood. MT is thought to act through interoceptive salience and attentional control mechanisms, but until now conflicting evidence from...
Frontiers in Psychology
2011
Micah Allen, G. Williams
35 citations
Consciousness is typically construed as being explainable purely in terms of either private, raw feels or higher-order, reflective representations. In contrast to this false dichotomy, we propose a new view of consciousness as an interactive, plastic phenomenon open to sociocultural influence. We take up our account of consciousness from the observation of radical cortical neuroplasticity in...