Enactivism and Active Inference in Person-Centred Clinical Care - Volume II

Building on the foundations established in the first volume, this second collection continues to explore enactivism and active inference as frameworks for understanding and improving clinical practice, while broadening the scope beyond the therapeutic alliance to encompass the wider landscape of person-centred care.Since the original collection, the field has moved considerably. The Free Energy Principle (FEP) and active inference have been formalized into increasingly tractable clinical models and understanding of the therapeutic alliance has been elevated with the addition of computational psychiatry theories, with increased applicability of concepts such as active inference, interoceptive inference, mentalization of interoception. The application of these concepts to various clinical presentations, including depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders, and chronic pain, has grown substantially. At the same time, work in wider clinical contexts such as osteopathic care, musculoskeletal medicine, and manual therapy has deepened the case for an (en)active inference-informed understanding of the practitioner-patient-environment interface, particularly regarding the psychological and neurocomputational mechanisms through which embodied clinical encounters shape interoceptive updating, contextual expectation, and therapeutic outcomes. The growing sophistication of neurocomputational models, alongside advances in computational phenotyping and precision psychiatry, opens new possibilities for translating enactivist principles into measurable, clinically actionable targets. Through the lens of active inference, an individual's perception and behavior can be understood as seeking evidence for their generative models of the world, termed self-evidencing. The patient can be held within a therapeutic relationship and can generate more adaptive models - either psychological, behavioral or bodily-based. Computational psychiatry has brought the elemental aspects of the therapeutic alliance into clearer relief, which support clinicians of different specialties to address how the therapeutic process reflects changes in generative models, on many levels.This volume takes these developments as its starting point. The therapeutic alliance remains an important thread - it is, after all, one of the best-supported predictors of clinical outcomes - but this collection is also interested in the full range of psychological processes through which person-centred care is enacted, especially regarding cutting-edge concepts such as active inference and enactivism. Submissions are encouraged that consider how practitioners and clients co-construct shared experience, how embodied interaction and awareness shape belief updating and therapeutic change, how relational factors modulate interoceptive inference and clinical outcomes, the value to clinical care and how the biopsychosocial model is enriched by enactivist and active inference accounts across clinical disciplines. Submissions from clinically relevant healthcare contexts (e.g. psychotherapy, psychiatry, pain management, and allied health disciplines such as osteopathic care and musculoskeletal medicine) are welcome where they engage substantively with the psychological mechanisms, interoceptive processes, contextual factors, or neurocomputational models that underpin person-centered care.Areas of interest include, but are not limited to the following:• Current psychotherapeutic theory and treatment processes that consider the place active inference has in understanding individual psychopathology, intra- and interpersonal process, the therapeutic relationship, and clinical change.• Enactivism and active inference as theoretical foundations for person-centred clinical care across healthcare disciplines• Therapeutic alliance, practitioner-patient relationship, and practitioner-patient-environment synchrony• Interoceptive inference and precision-weighting as psychological mechanisms in psychopathology, pain, and therapeutic response• Computational and neurocomputational models of clinical processes, including precision psychiatry and computational phenotyping• Applications of active inference to specific clinical conditions and contexts in person-centred care• Active inference and psychodynamic integration; predictive processing accounts of transference, mentalization, alexithymia, and self-organisation in psychotherapy• Psychological and contextual dimensions of how interoceptive inference, therapeutic alliance, and contextual expectation shape clinical outcomes in varied settings e.g. osteopathic, musculoskeletal, and manual therapy care• Mindfulness-based, somatic, and contemplative approaches framed within an enactivist or predictive processing account, with reference to their psychological mechanisms of action• Person-centred digital health, eHealth, AI-assisted clinical interventions through an active inference lens• Qualitative, phenomenological, and mixed-methods investigations of embodied clinical encounters and their psychological dimensions• Novel theoretical frameworks, hypothesis and theory articles, and neurocomputational models with direct relevance to clinical psychological practiceAll submissions should engage substantively with the psychological, interoceptive, or neurocomputational mechanisms through which enactivism or active inference illuminate clinical practice. Authors are encouraged to choose the journal and section that best aligns with their research. This Research Topic welcomes papers that share the core theoretical focus on enactivism and active inference in clinical care. If in doubt or further questions, please contact the journal for guidance on sharing a brief abstract summary before submission. Topic editors: Jorge Eduardo Esteves, Patrice Duquette, Francesco Cerritelli Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81082/enactivism-and-active-inference-in-person-centred-clinical-care---volume-ii