Interoceptive cardiac expectations to emotional stimuli predict visual perception.

Abstract

Previous work exploring the interplay between the processing of internal bodily signals and the perception of external events suggests a correlative relationship between both domains. Here, we demonstrate an experimentally induced link between visual perception and the emotional modulation of interoceptive cardiac signals. We pair an emotion repetition-suppression paradigm shown to modulate neural responses to heartbeats with a previously reported visual detection task. Using electrophysiological and cardiac measurements, we show that, relative to alternating facial expressions of emotions, repeating facial expressions evoke stable patterns of cardiac responses and that this iteration of the cardiac response leads to a distinct modulation of the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP) amplitude. Crucially, we were able to modulate the direction of the amplitude change to increase HEP expression in response to repeated emotionally neutral faces and decrease it by repeating angry faces. Visual detection accuracy was significantly higher in repeating, relative to alternating face trials. Furthermore, reduced HEP amplitude to repeated angry faces acted as a direct predictor of subsequently elevated detection performance. Our findings demonstrate that accurate top-down anticipation of the heartbeat signal coincides with enhanced exteroceptive visual perception, particularly in the context of emotional events. Findings hereby highlight the integrated nature of internal and external stimulus processing and implicate predictive interoceptive processes induced by emotions for the conscious perception of sensory input activated from outside of the body. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).