Anil Seth:
Being a beast machine: how the self emerges – and fades – in the predictive brain and body
We often take ourselves for granted, but we should not. I will develop a view of the experience of selfhood grounded in the framework of predictive processing and active inference. In this view, the self is not the recipient of perceptions, nor is it the director of actions: the self is a perception too, or better – a collection of perceptions. At the heart of conscious selfhood is not rationality, or free will, but control-oriented predictive (allostatic) regulation of the interior of the body. This view implies a deep connection between mind and life, and provides a new way to understand the subjective nature of conscious experience as emerging from systems that care intrinsically about their own existence.
Contrary to the old doctrine of Descartes, we are conscious because we are beast machines. I will end by exploring what this view of the self has to say about dissociation and depersonalization – when the self loses its reality.
Ana Paiva:
Artificial Embodiments: From organic to silicon others
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Joe Perkins:
Unreality Check
When discussing Depersonalisation and Derealisation Disorder (DDD), having a knowledge of the academic theories underpinning the condition is vital. But – I firmly believe that the ‘other’ piece of the puzzle is of equal importance when it comes to understanding it.
I have lived with chronic DDD for over 15 years now, and whilst the medical descriptors of it being a protective reflex of the mind and a psychological freeze response do explain things to some degree, the real-world ramifications are still missing from that picture. How does the condition impact somebody’s ability to function? How can you find language that portrays what dissociation feels like in a way others can understand? Is there sufficient awareness amongst clinicians when you take that big step and ask for help? How do you get out of bed in the morning when nothing about you, or your life, feels real?
Or – perhaps more immediately – what did I say to the travel insurance folks when asked to disclose my diagnoses before flying out to speak here?
In this talk, I will be offering my lived-experience perspective on DDD. It won’t be the most profoundly forward-thinking hour you’ll sit through. But when the concepts of past and future are suspended tantalisingly out of reach, giving you a brief glimpse into my present is about all I can do.
Unreal Charity (Jane Charlton):
Unreal: Anecdotal insights into depersonalisation and derealisation
Anna Ciaunica:
Overinferencing the Self: An Active Inference Account of Altered Sense of Self and Agency in Depersonalisation
This talks considers the phenomenology of depersonalisation disorder, in relation to predictive processing and its associated pathophysiology. To do this, we first establish a few mechanistic tenets of predictive processing that are necessary to talk about phenomenal transparency, mental action, and self as subject. We briefly review the important role of ‘predicting precision’ and how this affords mental action and the loss of phenomenal transparency. We then turn to sensory attenuation and the phenomenal consequences of (pathophysiological) failures to attenuate or modulate sensory precision. We then consider this failure in the context of depersonalisation disorder. The key idea here is that depersonalisation disorder reflects the remarkable capacity to explain perceptual engagement with the world via the hypothesis that “I am an embodied perceiver, but I am not in control of my perception”. We suggest that individuals with depersonalisation may believe that ‘another agent’ is controlling their thoughts, perceptions or actions, while maintaining full insight that the ‘other agent’ is ‘me’ (the self). Finally, we rehearse the predictions of this formal analysis, with a special focus on the psychophysical and physiological abnormalities that may underwrite the phenomenology of depersonalisation. We will then present recent empirical findings ‘hot from the oven’ from our group on atypical self-related sensory processing in relation to depersonalization.
Liberty Severs & Alberto Colombo:
It’s a kind of magic – Exploring multisensory modulation of the sense of self through bodily movement and action observation in depersonalisation
We take our experiences of the self and presence for granted in daily life. However, within depersonalisation and derealization disorder(s) such experiences are radically different: Individuals with depersonalisation report the pervasive feeling of detachment, both from the world within and outside of the self. This talk will present ongoing studies that explore the multisensory modulation of self and presence in depersonalisation, taking as inspiration the ‘magic shoes’ paradigm originally developed by Tajadura-Jimenez and colleagues. We extend this auditory sensory feedback approach to examine bodily movement (Study 1) and action observation (Study 2) in depersonalisation experiences, and explore the potential implications of this work for research at the intersection of self-experience, philosophical beliefs, and therapeutic outcomes in future studies. Overall, we aim to better understand – at both the conceptual and empirical level – the complex features of depersonalisation experiences, from lower- to higher-levels of selfhood.