Abstract
Interoception plays a key role in experiencing emotions, as it provides information about bodily arousal. Cardiac feedback manipulation proved to be a useful tool for exploring interoceptive processes. However, previous research showed inconclusive results on the influence of synchronous and false cardiac feedback on autonomic arousal. In the present study, we measured the influence of accelerated false cardiac feedback on participants' heart rate, respiratory rate and heart rate variability. Furthermore, we were interested in the modulatory effect of interoceptive accuracy measured by the Schandry task. Participants' ECG and respiratory rate were recorded during experimental task involving presentation of synchronous and false auditory cardiac feedback. Contrary to our assumption, false cardiac feedback elicited deceleration of heart rate and reduction of heart rate variability. Interoceptive accuracy had no effect on either variable. According to participant's reports, cardiac and the respiratory deceleration may come from down-regulatory responses to the distorted feedback.
Highlights
Our organism continuously monitors its internal state to ensure optimal energy expenditure in order to retain homeostatic balance
The dependent t-tests showed that the false cardiac feedback (FCF) in the passive condition (FCF Passive vs. synchronous cardiac feedback (SCF) Passive) did elicit a significant change in heart rate (HR) [t(26) = - 4.95, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = -0.95]
Correlation coefficients did not exceed 0.23 and p-values were higher than 0.6 in all conditions. This experiment investigated the changes in the HR, respiratory rate (ResR) and heart rate variability (HRV) measured as standard deviation of RR intervals (SDNN) and RMSSD induced by FCF
Summary
Our organism continuously monitors its internal state to ensure optimal energy expenditure in order to retain homeostatic balance. The ability to perceive the internal state and processes of one’s body, such as heart rate (HR), temperature, oxygen level, etc., is labelled interoception Subjects with good interoceptive ability are better in perceiving their physiological condition and are more aware of their physiological changes (Garfinkel, Seth, Barrett, Suzuki, & Critchley, 2015). Interoception has been modeled as having three dimensions One of the dimensions is interoceptive accuracy, which represents the objective accuracy in detecting bodily signals and it can be measured with objective methods, such as the Schandry task (Schandry, 1981)
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