Abstract
ObjectivePrevious research has shown reduced interoceptive accuracy (IAcc) in depression. Attention deficit represents a key symptom of depression. Moreover, IAcc is positively correlated with attention. There is no study that investigates the effect of depression on IAcc and attention. The aim of this study is to examine the mediating effect of IAcc on depression and attention.MethodsThirty-six depressed patients from the Psychosomatic Clinic in Windach were matched with 36 healthy controls according to age and sex and were assessed at Ulm University. All participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II, the heartbeat perception task to examine IAcc, and the d2 test assessing selective attention.ResultsDepressed patients showed attention deficits—both for general visual attention and IAcc—compared to healthy controls. The mediation analyses revealed that the relationship between depression and attention is not mediated via IAcc. Furthermore, depression predicts IAcc and attention, but these effects are direct and largely unaffected by the respective other variable.DiscussionThe results of the present study highlight both interoceptive as well as attention deficits in depressed patients. No clear mediation between these variables could be shown in this study. More elaborative research is needed to clarify whether different approaches to improve IAcc are effective for these deficits in depressed patients and could therefore be of importance as an additional aspect of therapy in depression.
Highlights
Affecting over 300 million people (4.7%) worldwide, major depression is one of the most common mental diseases (World Health Organization [WHO], 2017)
Typical problems in depressed patients such as decreased perception and regulations of emotion and stress as well as the perceptions of hunger and satiety are related to the concept of interoception, which is described as the ability to perceive and sense internal bodily signals (Vaitl, 1996; Cameron, 2001; Craig, 2002)
Depression was significantly negatively correlated to the total number of processed items in the d2 test (r = −0.26, p ≤ 0.05) and correct answers (r = −0.26, p ≤ 0.05), suggesting that higher levels of depression predict lower attention scores
Summary
Affecting over 300 million people (4.7%) worldwide, major depression is one of the most common mental diseases (World Health Organization [WHO], 2017). Due to the high number of affected people, it represents a severe public health burden (Greenberg and Birnbaum, 2005; Wittchen et al, 2011; Ferrari et al, 2013; World Health Organization [WHO], 2017). Interoception and Attention in Depression people experience impairments of different domains, including affective and cognitive symptoms (e.g., loss of interest, feelings of guilt, or concentration problems) as well as somatic distress. IAcc is described as the perception of internal bodily signals and is objectively measured by the heartbeat perception task (Schandry, 1981). In this article the focus is on IAcc, which represents the main dimension of interoception and is associated with IS as well as IAw
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