Ongaro and Kaptchuk 1

I am currently reading this paper: Symptom perception, placebo effects, and the Bayesian brain - so juicy. I stumbled upon a blogpost by Tim Cocks at Noijam that mentioned it.

I have decided to give it a "full treatment" - a full, line-by-line treatment. This is because I would love to understand Bayesian thinking better, I'm a beginner, pain has always been a way into understanding life in a body better, and this paper promises to do all that.
Plus, on Facebook, there are two bright minds who want to debate the paper.

As usual, this blog will be my private (well, probably not private, but I can pretend it is) workspace - a place for me to work on my own thinking about it, reflect on the conversation as it unfolds on Facebook, ruminating, pondering, storing all the links and analyzing WhatItAllMeans, to me.

As usual, I will be looking at all of it from the perspective of a manual therapist and neuromatrician who works with peoples' nervous systems directly to help them overcome pain problems.

This is the first of many blogposts I will write about this paper as I try to grok all of it.

Background
I had a moment of clarity yesterday (few of these moments, so it felt sharp!)
I sent out a thought.
Here is the thought I had:

"Here's a thought (spurred by a conversation with Hsieh Hsing Wu *):  

1. Kinesthesia is to proprioception as pain is to nociception.

2. Pain is awareness of (danger signaling perceived as if coming from) the body, top-down. Nociception is sensory input, bottom-up.  

3.Kinesthesia is awareness of (movement of) the body, top-down. Proprioception is sensory input, bottom-up.  

4. It is not appropriate to mix up any of these."

I based it (and will base subsequent thoughts) on these items, which clarified many things for me:
1. Anil Seth's TedTalk on predictive processing: Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality
2. Anil Seth's TedTalk, truncated.
3. A wonderful article in New Scientist that I refer to endlessly:  Understanding Body Ownership and Agency. 

Proprioception is likely more about ownership, whereas kinesthesia is more about agency.
Manual therapy is something I now regard as "exafference" (from the Liepelt and Brooks article) an environmental influence on the system) that creates compelling enough perturbation that the system can change its own predictions. 
........................
References

1. Ongaro, Giulio, Kaptchuk, Ted J., 2018, Symptom perception, placebo effects, and the Bayesian brain. PAIN, Aug 6, 2018. (To read the full paper, click on "Article as pdf")

2. Cocks. T, 2018, The ‘Bayesian brain’ for beginners, by way of placebo. Noijam blogpost Oct 9, 2018

3. Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality Ted Talk, Anil Seth, video, 17 minutes, April 2017

4. Your Brain Hallucinates to Create Your Reality. Ted Talk, Anil Seth, truncated to 3 minutes, June 4, 2018, TED Facebook

5. Roman Liepelt, Jack Brooks, 2017,  Understanding Body Ownership and Agency.  New Scientist May 1, 2017

*Hsieh Hsing Wu is a physio in Taiwan who I met 14, 15 years ago in online forums. He lived in Australia at the time I met him. He attended my DNM class in Taipei this past May, and is interested in becoming a DNM workshop instructor there.