Thermosensation and emotion: Thermosensory accuracy in a dynamic thermal matching task is linked to depression and anxiety symptomatology

Abstract

Interoception is related to the generation of bodily feelings and the awareness of ourselves as ‘sentient beings’, informing the organism about its bodily needs to guarantee survival. Previous studies have reported links among interoception, emotion processing, and mental health. For example, the alignment of interoceptive dimensions (i.e., accuracy, sensibility, awareness) can predict emotional symptoms, such as anxiety. Here, we aimed to investigate the relationship between the perception of a certain type of skin-mediated interoceptive signal, i.e., thermosensation, and self-reported depression, anxiety, and stress. One hundred seventy participants completed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) and a dynamic thermal matching task, a static temperature detection task, and a heartbeat counting task. Our results revealed that self-reported anxiety and depression were related to the perception of temperature on hairy and non-hairy skin, respectively: higher anxiety was related to better performance on the thermal matching task on the forearm, while higher depression was related to poorer performance on dynamic and static temperature tasks on the palm. Discrepancies between thermosensory accuracy and sensibility measures (‘trait prediction error’) were related to heightened anxiety, in line with previous studies. No significant correlations were found between DASS-21 scores and heartbeat counting accuracy. In conclusion, this study suggests that individual differences in thermosensory perception in different areas of the body are associated with self-reported anxiety and depression.