The Body Across Adulthood: On the Relation Between Interoception and Body Representations.

Simona Raimo,Maddalena Boccia,Dario Grossi,Liana Palermo,Antonella Di Vita,Cecilia Guariglia,Maria Cropano

doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.586684

Abstract

Interoceptive information plays a pivotal role in building body representations (BR), but the association between interoception and the different types of BR in healthy individuals has never been systematically investigated. Thus, this study aimed to explore the association between BR and interoceptive sensibility (IS) throughout adulthood. One hundred thirty-seven healthy participants (50 aged from 18 to 40 years old; 50 aged from 41 to 60 years old; and 37 over 60 years old) were given a self-report tool for assessing IS (the Self-Awareness Questionnaire; SAQ), and a specific battery including tasks evaluating three different BR (i.e., the body schema, using the Hand Laterality Task; the body structural representation, using the Frontal Body Evocation task, FBE; and body semantics, using the Object-Body Part Association Task) as well as control tasks (i.e., tasks with non-body stimuli). The older age group (aged over 60 years old) showed lower performances on the tasks probing the body schema and body structural representation than younger groups (aged 18 to 40 and 41 to 60 years old). More interestingly, worse performances on a task assessing the body schema were significantly associated with higher IS with older age, suggesting that higher awareness of one’s inner body sensations would decrease the plasticity of this BR. These findings are interpreted according to the neuropsychological model of BR development and the effects of aging on the brain.

Highlights

Interoception refers to the ability to perceive one’s own physical sensations related to internal organ functioning, such as heartbeat, itch, respiration, and satiety (Vaitl, 1996; Cameron, 2001; Craig, 2002; Barrett et al, 2004)
The pairwise comparisons performed by means of the Mann– Whitney U-tests showed that scores obtained on the body schema and its control task, and on the body structural representation were significantly lower in the group of participants aged over 60 years than in the two groups of younger participants aged 18–40 years (Hand Laterality Task: U = 679, p = 0.022; Object Laterality Task: U = 702, p = 0.034; For the body structural representation (FBE): U = 64, p < 0.0001) and 41–60 years (Hand Laterality Task: U = 679, p = 0.023; Object Laterality Task: U = 692, p = 0.026; FBE: U = 119, p < 0.0001)
The present study aimed to investigate the relation between interoceptive sensibility (IS) and body representations (BR) during the adult lifespan

Summary

Introduction

Interoception refers to the ability to perceive one’s own physical sensations related to internal organ functioning, such as heartbeat, itch, respiration, and satiety (Vaitl, 1996; Cameron, 2001; Craig, 2002; Barrett et al, 2004). A more coherent nomenclature of different components of interoceptive processing (see Khalsa et al, 2018) has been developed, reflecting the need for operationalization in neuroscience and clinical practice. It mainly distinguishes between the interoceptive attention (i.e., the process of observing internal bodily sensation), the interoceptive accuracy or interoceptive sensitivity (i.e., the process of correctly and precisely monitoring the sensation as assessed by comparisons between subjective and objective indices), and the interoceptive sensibility (IS; i.e., the self-perceived tendency to focus on interoceptive signals, representing a trait-like feature).

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