Theory of Reality Feeling: Perspective-Content Coupling as a Measurable Gradient

Reality feeling is defined as a measurable gradient of perspective-content coupling between the perspectival organization of experience and current content. When coupling is high, content is experienced as directly present in the current world; when coupling is reduced, content remains recognizable, but its subjective reality is weakened, and the world is experienced as distant, artificial, or dreamlike. The theory describes this gradient in terms of coordination among the default mode network, dorsal attention network, salience network, and bodily grounding, including posteromedial, insular, and multisensory circuits. Derealization provides a clinical model of the dissociation between intact content and reduced subjective reality of content. Ketamine-induced dissociation provides a pharmacologically controlled model of acute decoupling between the perspectival organization of experience and content. The theory predicts that variation in reality feeling under preserved recognition accuracy is associated with measures of internetwork coordination, salience-network-directed regulation, and bodily-temporal grounding of content.