ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we build upon theories and findings on the neurological syndrome of anosognosia for hemiplegia (lack of awareness into one's paralysis; AHP) to propose that the experience of oneself entails at least two normally integrated levels of inference. Namely, inferences about the here-and-now of experience in the first person are integrated within counterfactual inferences about the self beyond first-person experience. The relation between the two is understood as dynamic, in the sense that the contextual salience of different signals determines the degree to which prediction errors in first-person experiences will be explained away by more objectified predictions about the self, or will allow the updating of the latter. Frontoparietal disconnections, particularly of the salience network, disrupt this integration, leading to disruptions in the most abstract, metacognitive (allocentric and prospective) aspects of body awareness. Our main thesis is that anosognosia is best explained as a dissociation between current sensations and emotions from the body from beliefs about the body, so that the later beliefs can no longer be updated by first-person prediction errors. This dissociation allows us a rare glimpse of the normally unconscious processes of integration and inference that underlie self-experience in everyday life.
