Immune-Mediated Changes in Conscious Experience: A Computational Model of Cytokine-Driven E/I Dysregulation

The sense of a unified minimal self is a dynamical achievement of the brain, arising from the precise coordination of predictive processing and E/I interactions. While the phenomenological shifts of sickness response are well-documented, a unified computational mechanism linking sickness behaviour and destabilization of consciousness does not yet exist. This paper proposes that systemic immune response leading to inflammation acts as a global uncertainty signal that disrupts the self-model by leading to reduced precision and increased autocorrelation, specifically, that pro-inflammatory cytokines interfere with GABA-ergic signalling and interoceptive inference. To test this hypothesis, we employ a Wilson-Cowan neural mass model with an added cytokine parameter and test it under different cytokine loads to observe the changes in E/I dynamics. The model illustrated shallower attractor basins, characterised by increased temporal autocorrelation and under-damped recovery from stochastic perturbations. This model illustrates how immune-modulated inhibition could produce dynamical regimes consistent with temporal blurring observed during sickness. By reframing sickness behaviour as a reactive reconfiguration of self-model stability, this paper helps to distinguish modulatory immune effects from structural neuropathology and helps with an understanding of dissociative states in acute and chronic inflammatory conditions. Supplementary Material File (doddavaram_2026_immune_consciousness_model.pdf) - Download - 543.63 KB Information & Authors Information Version history Copyright This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Authors Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 105views 42downloads Citations Download citation Aditi Doddavaram. Immune-Mediated Changes in Conscious Experience: A Computational Model of Cytokine-Driven E/I Dysregulation. Authorea. 18 March 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.177385901.15539620/v1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.177385901.15539620/v1 If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download. For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu.