ReviewNeuroscience and biobehavioral reviews2014
The free-energy self: a predictive coding account of self-recognition.
Review in Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 176 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
176 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Neuroscience of Virtual Reality: From Virtual Exposure to Embodied Medicine.Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking · 2019Pooled it
- The Effect of Visual Capture Towards Subjective Embodiment Within the Full Body Illusion.Scientific reports · 2019Trial
- The dynamic bodily self across lifespan: Agency, ownership, and the plasticity of internal body models.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Task-Dependent Heart-Brain Interactions Regulate Human Self-Awareness.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Objective Neural Markers of Identity Familiarization via Passive Exposure and Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation EEG.eNeuro · 2026Article
- Errors or Adaptations? A Critical Review of Predictive Processing in Psychiatry.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Enhanced Neural Responses to Self-Name Stimuli Relative to Tone and Reversed Speech Deviants in the Auditory Oddball Paradigm.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Relating proprioceptive embodiment to body dissatisfaction in anorexia and bulimia patients: effect of visual body images.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- The Somatic Rubber Hand Illusion does not modulate perceived hand position in children with severe visual impairments.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Disentangling visually driven tactile predictions from multisensory integration in body ownership.Royal Society open science · 2026Article
- Children's Embodiment of Non-Human Virtual Hand Forms.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Gravity-awareness: a deep learning and LLM framework for predicting human adaptation to altered gravitational environments.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Towards an active inference account of deep meditative deconstruction.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- From self-organizing systems to subjective temporal extension.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Strength of religious faith is associated with altered sense of agency during multisensory conflict.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Direct input variables: rethinking the limits of the extended mind hypothesis within predictive processing.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Rethinking the bodily self: evidence from the enfacement illusion in women at risk for eating disorders.Journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- Both first-hand and vicarious social ostracism reduces sense of agency and body ownership: evidence from explicit and implicit measures.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- Psilocybin as a psychophysical adaptogen in chronic pain rehabilitation.The journal of pain · 2025Article
- Distinct Roles of the Premotor and Occipitotemporal Cortices in the Full-Body Illusion.eNeuro · 2025Article
116 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Recognising and representing one's self as distinct from others is a fundamental component of self-awareness. However, current theories of self-recognition are not embedded within global theories of cortical function and therefore fail to provide a compelling explanation of how the self is processed. We present a theoretical account of the neural and computational basis of self-recognition that is embedded within the free-energy account of cortical function. In this account one's body is processed in a Bayesian manner as the most likely to be "me". Such probabilistic representation arises through the integration of information from hierarchically organised unimodal systems in higher-level multimodal areas. This information takes the form of bottom-up "surprise" signals from unimodal sensory systems that are explained away by top-down processes that minimise the level of surprise across the brain. We present evidence that this theoretical perspective may account for the findings of psychological and neuroimaging investigations into self-recognition and particularly evidence that representations of the self are malleable, rather than fixed as previous accounts of self-recognition might suggest.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.