Abstract
The perception of the body’s internal state (interoception) and the perception and processing of environmental sensory stimuli (exteroception) act together to modulate adaptive behaviour, including eating behaviour, and are related to bodyweight control. This study evaluated the impact of the Food and Nutrition Education Program with Sensory and Cognitive Exercises on interoceptive sensitivity and on the expression of exteroceptive perception in women who experienced difficulty in controlling their body weight. Thirty-seven women were randomized into two groups and evaluated at two moments: before and after the intervention or before and after a 3- to 4-week waiting period. A heartbeat tracking task was used for interoception evaluation. Participants were asked to write a text describing three foods after tasting them for exteroception evaluation. After the intervention, the participants showed an increase in interoceptive sensitivity, and an increase in the expression of exteroceptive stimuli perception through a semantic assessment of their writing related to the tasting experience. In addition, the results point to a possible connection between the mechanisms governing interoception and exteroception. This work brings important contributions to the search for strategies capable of promoting the perception and integration of physiological and environmental stimuli in food consumption.
Highlights
Traditional strategies to control body weight, involving dietary restrictions and counting calories, have been considered to be ineffective in the medium and long terms [1]
The sensations triggered by external stimuli, and the internal pathways that these sensations impact, are known as exteroception [6], while the sensations triggered by internal stimuli, related to the body’s physiological state, are known as interoception
This study evaluated women who experienced difficulty maintaining their body weight and who participated in the Food and Nutrition Education Program with Sensory and Cognitive Exercises (PESC), an intervention designed to promote consciousness of eating experiences [41]
Summary
Traditional strategies to control body weight, involving dietary restrictions and counting calories, have been considered to be ineffective in the medium and long terms [1]. There is currently a demand for the development of alternative strategies that can promote better eating behaviours, but which are not based on the practice of diets [2] In this context, interventions that promote the perception of the sensory aspects of eating experiences have been identified as promising because they possibly point out ways to prevent and control obesity [3,4]. The brain constantly carries out the integration between exteroceptive and interoceptive stimuli, reflecting our adaptive ability to respond to environmental changes [7] This adaptive response to environmental stimuli is favoured by the individual’s ability to consciously perceive subtle bodily changes resulting from such stimuli at the time that they occur [8]
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