Interoception across Modalities: On the Relationship between Cardiac Awareness and the Sensitivity for Gastric Functions

Beate M Herbert,Olga Pollatos,Eric R Muth,Cornelia Herbert,Manos Tsakiris

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036646

Beate M Herbert, Olga Pollatos + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036646

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Abstract

The individual sensitivity for ones internal bodily signals (“interoceptive awareness”) has been shown to be of relevance for a broad range of cognitive and affective functions. Interoceptive awareness has been primarily assessed via measuring the sensitivity for ones cardiac signals (“cardiac awareness”) which can be non-invasively measured by heartbeat perception tasks. It is an open question whether cardiac awareness is related to the sensitivity for other bodily, visceral functions. This study investigated the relationship between cardiac awareness and the sensitivity for gastric functions in healthy female persons by using non-invasive methods. Heartbeat perception as a measure for cardiac awareness was assessed by a heartbeat tracking task and gastric sensitivity was assessed by a water load test. Gastric myoelectrical activity was measured by electrogastrography (EGG) and subjective feelings of fullness, valence, arousal and nausea were assessed. The results show that cardiac awareness was inversely correlated with ingested water volume and with normogastric activity after water load. However, persons with good and poor cardiac awareness did not differ in their subjective ratings of fullness, nausea and affective feelings after drinking. This suggests that good heartbeat perceivers ingested less water because they subjectively felt more intense signals of fullness during this lower amount of water intake compared to poor heartbeat perceivers who ingested more water until feeling the same signs of fullness. These findings demonstrate that cardiac awareness is related to greater sensitivity for gastric functions, suggesting that there is a general sensitivity for interoceptive processes across the gastric and cardiac modality.

Highlights

The perception and feedback of visceral signals is considered to be an essential variable in many theories of emotion [1,2,3,4], suggesting a close relationship between the perception and processing of bodily signals (‘‘interoception’’) and emotional experience and cognition
The present study investigated the relationship between cardiac awareness using a heartbeat tracking task and the sensitivity for gastric functions assessed by means of a water load test (WLT), in association with gastric myoelectrical activity as measured by noninvasive electrogastrogram (EGG) in healthy persons
The results demonstrate that there is a significant negative association between cardiac awareness and the amount of water ingested ad libitum that represents an indicator of subjectively felt fullness [35,36,41]

Summary

Introduction

The perception and feedback of visceral signals is considered to be an essential variable in many theories of emotion [1,2,3,4], suggesting a close relationship between the perception and processing of bodily signals (‘‘interoception’’) and emotional experience and cognition It has been shown, that it is not the mere occurrence of physiological changes but their perception and a person’s individual ability to perceive visceral responses (‘‘interoceptive awareness’’) that affects emotional, cognitive and behavioral functions [5,6,7,8,9,10], with benefits in decision-making [11] and attentive processes [12], and behavioral self-regulation [13]. In ‘‘heartbeat discrimination tasks’’ participants are required to determine whether heartbeat sensations occur simultaneously with external stimuli (e.g., tones, lights, vibrations), which are presented at different time delays following the onset of the R-wave of the electrocardiogram (ECG) [16,19]

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