A Predictive-Processing Hypothesis

Daphne Garrido

Preprint 6 · September 2026 - Preprint on Zenodo

Body Self Modeling Interoception and Gender Incongruence.pdf

The brain continuously constructs the feeling that a body belongs to us. Gender may be part of that construction.

Hide someone's real hand behind a screen.

Place a realistic rubber hand where they can see it.

Then stroke the hidden hand and the rubber one in the same place at the same time.

For many people, something strange begins to happen.

The rubber hand starts to feel, at least partly, like their own.

Threaten it and they may react.

Ask where their hidden real hand is, and their estimate can drift toward the artificial one.

The experiment sounds almost like a trick.

It is actually a window into one of neuroscience's deepest problems:

How does the brain know which body is “me”?

That question provides the starting point for Body-Self Modeling, Interoception, and Gender Incongruence.

Body ownership is something the brain constructs

At every moment, multiple sensory systems report information about the body.