I see neither your Fear, nor your Sadness – Interoception in adolescents

Abstract

Interoception describes the mapping of the body's internal landscape and has been connected to greater intensity of emotional experience. The goal of the current study was to explore the relationship between interoception and emotion face recognition in healthy adolescents. The heartbeat perception task was used to assess interoceptive accuracy(IAC) and participants were asked to recognize different facial expressions. EEG activity was recorded, providing data for the P100, the N170 and the P300 ERP components. Results indicated high sensitivity to negative affect, as well as low accuracy in the recognition of fear and sadness among adolescents high in IAC, reflected by amplitude modulations in the N170 and the P300. The interpretation of these results focus on the intensity experienced in negative facial emotions, modified by IAC, as well as on emotional valence and arousal. These findings emphasize the dynamic integration of body and mind for shaping emotion recognition in adolescence.