ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
Active interoceptive inference and the emotional brain.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 350 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
350 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The impact of dance activities on social skills and related behaviors in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders: a meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Mechanistic studies in pathological health anxiety: A systematic review and emerging conceptual framework.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Pooled it
- The neurobiology of functional neurological disorders characterised by impaired awareness.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- "StudiCare Mindfulness": effects of an online mindfulness-based intervention on mindfulness, stress, and interoception in university students - a randomized controlled trial.BMC psychology · 2026Trial
- Hunyuan zhuang improves interoception: evidence from an expert-novice study and a pilot randomized controlled trial.Scientific reports · 2026Trial
- Effect of non-invasive spinal cord stimulation in unmedicated adults with major depressive disorder: a pilot randomized controlled trial and induced current flow pattern.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Trial
- Pretreatment Alterations and Acute Medication Treatment Effects on Brain Task-Related Functional Connectivity in Youth With Bipolar Disorder: A Neuroimaging Randomized Clinical Trial.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2022Trial
- Directional Brain Connectivity Changes Induced by Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback: A Spectral Dynamic Causal Modeling Study.Research square · 2026Article
- Movement-Anchored Emotional Memory: An Embodied Neuropsychological Framework.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Body Attunement: An Integrative Framework for Embodied Awareness and Therapeutic Presence in Counseling.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Prediction, pain, and the power of context: toward a contemporary identity for the chiropractic profession.Chiropractic & manual therapies · 2026Review
- From sensation to action: expectation, appraisal, and decision-making in patient-triggered cardiac monitoring.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2026Article
- Brain rhythms of depression: A predictive processing perspective.Trends in neurosciences · 2026Review
- Toward a Predictive Coding Account of Hypnotic Hypoalgesia: Integrating EEG Oscillations and Somatosensory Evoked Responses.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Errors or Adaptations? A Critical Review of Predictive Processing in Psychiatry.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Review
- Putting Emotional Memories in Context: The Constructionist Model of Emotional Memory.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2026Review
- Seeing Through Feeling: Dynamic Interplay Between Emotion and Visual Perception.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Exposure to false cardiac feedback alters pain perception and anticipatory cardiac frequency.eLife · 2026Article
- Emotions Are Folk Concepts in a Predicting Brain.Brain sciences · 2026Article
290 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
We review a recent shift in conceptions of interoception and its relationship to hierarchical inference in the brain. The notion of interoceptive inference means that bodily states are regulated by autonomic reflexes that are enslaved by descending predictions from deep generative models of our internal and external milieu. This re-conceptualization illuminates several issues in cognitive and clinical neuroscience with implications for experiences of selfhood and emotion. We first contextualize interoception in terms of active (Bayesian) inference in the brain, highlighting its enactivist (embodied) aspects. We then consider the key role of uncertainty or precision and how this might translate into neuromodulation. We next examine the implications for understanding the functional anatomy of the emotional brain, surveying recent observations on agranular cortex. Finally, we turn to theoretical issues, namely, the role of interoception in shaping a sense of embodied self and feelings. We will draw links between physiological homoeostasis and allostasis, early cybernetic ideas of predictive control and hierarchical generative models in predictive processing. The explanatory scope of interoceptive inference ranges from explanations for autism and depression, through to consciousness. We offer a brief survey of these exciting developments.This article is part of the themed issue 'Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health'.
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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.