Abstract
Previous studies on prospective memory (PM), defined as memory for future intentions, suggest that psychological stress enhances successful PM retrieval. However, the mechanisms underlying this notion remain poorly understood. We hypothesized that PM retrieval is achieved through interaction with autonomic nervous activity, which is mediated by the individual accuracy of interoceptive awareness, as measured by the heartbeat detection task. In this study, the relationship between cardiac reactivity and retrieval of delayed intentions was evaluated using the event-based PM task. Participants were required to detect PM target letters while engaged in an ongoing 2-back working memory task. The results demonstrated that individuals with higher PM task performance had a greater increase in heart rate on PM target presentation. Also, higher interoceptive perceivers showed better PM task performance. This pattern was not observed for working memory task performance. These findings suggest that cardiac afferent signals enhance PM retrieval, which is mediated by individual levels of interoceptive accuracy.This article is part of the themed issue ‘Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health’.
Highlights
Prospective memory (PM) refers to an individual’s ability to remember intentions or to plan or perform an action at some point in the future
We examined the relationship between cardiac activity and retrieval of a delayed intention in the eventbased PM task
The main focus was to test the hypotheses that PM performance is mediated by cardiac activity and by individual interoceptive accuracy
Summary
Prospective memory (PM) refers to an individual’s ability to remember intentions or to plan or perform an action at some point in the future. Cardiac reactivity was monitored as a measure of autonomic nervous activity, and the relationship between the change in heart rate and retrieval performance was evaluated in the event-based PM task. While participants were instructed not to predict their heart rate in the HDT, it is possible that they estimated the passage of time, affecting the HDT data and contaminating the measure of interoception If this were the case, the HDT error rates should correlate with time estimation accuracy. Dunn et al overcame this issue by demonstrating that HDT error rates do not correlate with time estimation accuracy [53] We addressed this possibility by instructing participants to complete a time estimation task. These data confirmed that the HDT error rate did not correlate with time estimation accuracy (r28 1⁄4 0.35, n.s.) [43]
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