text: Discussion 
  
  Current theories of predictive processing and active inference 
  assume that, to steer adaptive perception and action, the brain 
  forms internal generative models of the environment and of the 
  body within it. Various studies reveal that the brain has rich 
  models of the body; for example, it integrates somatosensory 
  and proprioceptive information into a coherent representation 
  of things like body size and limb position—i.e. a “body schema.” 
  More recently, this model-based perspective has been extended to 
  interoception—and the rich sensations we constantly receive from 
  the internal body. Theories of interoceptive processing propose 
  that the brain continuously estimates key bodily and homeo- 
  static variables, such as thirst or fatigue levels, perhaps forming 
  something like an “interoceptive schema.” 
  
  The centrality of physiological processes and bodily informa- 
  tion for the sense of self has been widely discussed by intero- 
  ceptive research (Seth et al. 2012, Quigley et al. 2021). Here, in 
  continuity with previous works (Barca and Pezzulo 2020), we sug- 
  gest that (i) some pathological behaviors—that “act on the body” 
  in maladaptive ways—might be considered as strategies for mod- 
  ifying internal models and the sense of self when it is deficient, 
  through bodily sensations and (ii) the sense of self can be defi- 
  cient when bodily information is uncertain, and this can happen 
  not only in clinical conditions but also during pivotal periods of 
  developmental transition, e.g. in adolescence. 