A body-related network of thalamic, somatosensory, insular, cingulate, and prefrontal areas responded to tactile oddballs.
Dynamic Causal Modelling revealed oddball stimuli modulated an ascending rostral-to-caudal hierarchy between these areas.
Within this feed-forward flow, only anterior insula showed reciprocal increases in connectivity with somatosensory cortex.
Subjective deviance detection ratings predicted the strength of feedback from prefrontal cortex to anterior insula
These results provide preliminary evidence for the newly emerging theory of embodied predictive coding.