Anil K. Seth

Consciousness scientist who imported the predictive-coding / free-energy framework into interoception, producing the wiki’s most recent theoretical synthesis. See seth-2013-interoceptive-inference.

Central idea: interoceptive inference

Emotions are the integrated content of top-down interoceptive predictions counterflowing with bottom-up interoceptive prediction errors, computed in a salience network on the AIC/ACC. Autonomic regulation is active-inference (predictions enslaving autonomic reflexes, given attenuated precision on interoceptive errors). This generalizes cognitive-appraisal — “interpretation” of arousal becomes Bayesian inference. See interoceptive-inference.

Positioning against predecessors

Seth explicitly distinguishes his top-down/inferential view from the largely bottom-up hierarchies of Damasio, Craig, and Critchley — the crux of feedforward-vs-predictive-interoception. (Critchley is a frequent collaborator and has moved toward the predictive camp.) His acknowledgements thank Sarah Garfinkel, Jakob Hohwy, Keisuke Suzuki, and — for shaping the ideas — Hugo Critchley and Manos Tsakiris.

Reach

Beyond emotion: body ownership (cardiac RHI with Suzuki), bodily self-consciousness, and a computational account of psychiatric disturbance (anxiety, psychosis, depersonalization) via aberrant/imprecise interoceptive inference. See embodied-selfhood.