The Experiential Self State as Affective Salience: Neurobiological, embodied, and predictive foundations of non-reflective consciousness

Abstract

This article proposes a dual-self states framework to demonstrate how phenomenology and neuroscience of embodied and altered states of consciousness illuminate the nature of consciousness and the sense of self. It argues that consciousness is best conceived as dynamic configurations of a reflective and an experiential self state, rather than as static, taxonomic layers of self. The reflective self corresponds to narrative, denotational, and self-referential consciousness underpinned by default mode network activity, whereas the experiential self is characterised as an embodied, affective-salience mode of perspectival awareness supported by salience network hubs, especially anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex, integrating interoceptive and exteroceptive signals into a coherent sense of “being here” as subject of experience. Within a predictive processing and dopaminergic framework, the experiential self state is construed as a mode in which precision-weighted affective and bodily prediction errors structure ongoing meta-aware experience, rather than non-conscious processing or contentless nondual awareness. Altered states, particularly such as examined in meditation research, provide further evidence of the processes involved in shifting to, and maintaining, the experiential self state, and how these processes may be practiced and developed. The framework yields testable predictions for neurocomputational modelling and longitudinal studies, positioning self-transcendent and related altered states as useful entry points for investigating how reflective and experiential modes of consciousness are distinct, and how experiential consciousness is embodied, pertains to salience processing, and is expressed in affective engagement with the world.