Abstract
Objective This research demonstrates that interoceptive attentiveness (IA) can modulate cortical oscillations related to the emotional and cognitive representations of observing pain in others. Methods Twenty participants were required to observe painful/nonpainful stimuli in an individual versus the interactive condition during the recording of the electroencephalogram. The sample was divided into experimental (EXP) and control (CTR) groups, and the EXP group was explicitly required to direct the attention on its interoceptive correlates while observing the stimuli. Results Mixed repeated measures, analyses of variance, were applied to each EEG frequency band. Significant findings were obtained mainly for theta and beta bands for the two groups. A hemispheric lateralisation effect was found, with right lateralisation of the theta band for the EXP group when observing painful stimuli and enhanced left activation of theta and beta bands for the CTR group when observing nonpainful stimuli. For both groups, frontal cortical regions were significantly sensitive to social scenarios, while posterior parietal activation was found for stimuli depicting the individual condition. Conclusions The results suggest that IA might enhance the emotional representation of painful stimuli, highlighting their negative and unpleasant features in the EXP group, while the attention of the CTR group was mainly drawn to nonpainful stimuli in social and individual conditions, with a positive valence. The role of frontal regions in the processing of social stimuli through social cognition, inducing emotional mirroring and requiring deeper analysis of the social context, was underlined. We propose that IA could be trained for promoting emotion regulation and empathic response.
Highlights
Interoception has been defined as the perception of the afferent signals on the body state and homeostasis, mainly relegating it to the physiological condition of the body
Interoception can be conceived as a type of perception that starts from physiology as a bodily experience that is related to homeostasis, which, encompasses neural correlates supporting mentalized representational states of the physiological condition of the body [3]. ese representational states have different degrees of awareness, ranging from unconscious to conscious levels [3]
The present study highlighted how the modulation of interoceptive attentiveness (IA) could lead to an enhancement of specific cortical effects related to the emotional and cognitive representations of observing pain in others
Summary
Interoception has been defined as the perception of the afferent signals on the body state and homeostasis, mainly relegating it to the physiological condition of the body. A recent broader definition of the construct combined anatomy and motivational levels and included neural correlates and mental representation of the internal changes of the body (i.e., the cortical signals of the relation between basic bodily perception and its effects on higher-order cognitive processing) [1, 2]. In this sense, interoception can be conceived as a type of perception that starts from physiology as a bodily experience that is related to homeostasis, which, encompasses neural correlates (e.g., insular cortex activity) supporting mentalized representational states of the physiological condition of the body [3]. From James and Lange theory [4] to predictive coding theories [5], it has been suggested that internal physiological sensations (and the representations of these somatic processes [6]) can evoke emotional responses and affective states
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