Listen to your inner body: embodied emotions in predictive neuroscience and traditional East Asian medicine

Abstract

The self is increasingly conceptualized as an embodied, predictive process in contemporary cognitive and affective neuroscience. The brain continually infers the causes of both exteroceptive and interoceptive signals in order to minimize prediction error and maintain allostatic balance. Within this framework, emotion can be understood as an inference about changes in bodily states. Parallel themes have long been articulated in traditional East Asian medicine (TEAM), where emotions are understood to modulate the flow of Qi and clinical practice is aimed at restoring dynamic balance through breath, movement, attention, acupuncture, and related interventions. This study brings these traditions into dialogue, arguing that the phenomenology of bodily patterns and the directional qualities of emotion in TEAM are compatible with predictive-processing accounts of interoception, allostasis, and affect regulation. We summarize key research on autonomic flexibility, emotional “body maps,” and interoception; integrate clinical observations from acupuncture practice; offer testable cross-framework hypotheses; and outline implications for mental health and wellbeing. We advocate a pluralistic, pragmatic approach that acknowledges conceptual diversity while using points of convergence to guide research and practice, rather than forcing one framework into the terms of the other. Bridging modern neuroscience with traditional insights can support a more deeply embodied understanding of the self and provide new avenues for investigating the regulation of emotional life.