Interoceptive Sensitivity Research Articles

Adolescent development of insula-dependent interoceptive regulation.

Adolescence is hypothesized to be a critical period for the maturation of self-regulatory capacities, including those that depend on interoceptive sensitivity, but the neural basis of interoceptive regulation in adolescence is unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and psychophysiology to study interoceptive regulation in healthy adolescent females. Participants regulated their gut activities in response to a virtual roller coaster by deep breathing aided by visually monitoring their online electrogastrogram (EGG) activity through a virtual thermometer (i.e. gut biofeedback), or without biofeedback. Analyses focused on the insula, given its putative role in interoception. The bilateral posterior insula showed increased activation in the no-biofeedback compared to biofeedback condition, suggesting that the participants relied more on interoceptive input when exteroceptive feedback was unavailable. The bilateral dorsal anterior insula showed activation linearly associated with age during both induction and regulation, and its activation during regulation correlated positively with change of EGG in the tachygastria frequency band from induction to regulation. Induction-related activation in the bilateral ventral anterior insula was nonlinearly associated with age and peaked at mid-adolescence. These results implicate different developmental trajectories of distinct sub-regions of the insula in interoceptive processes, with implications for competing neurobiological theories of female adolescent development.

Know thyself: Exploring interoceptive sensitivity in Parkinson's disease

BackgroundAlthough Parkinson's disease (PD) is defined by its motor symptoms, it is now well recognised that cognitive, affective and emotion domains are also impaired. The pathophysiology of these disabling non-motor symptoms (NMS) remains unclear; recently the involvement of limbic areas, including the insula, in the neurodegenerative process has been suggested to have a key role. These areas, and the insula in particular, are also been suggested as key regions for interoception; interoceptive sensitivity (IS) is a measure of the accuracy of perception of sensations from inside the body related to the function of internal organs. ObjectivesTo evaluate IS in PD patients by means of a well-established task: the heartbeat perception task. Moreover, we evaluated possible correlations between IS and psychological, affective and disease-related characteristics as well as fatigue perception in PD patients. MethodsTwenty PD patients and 20 healthy subjects (HS) were included and underwent the heartbeat perception task. An extensive evaluation of motor, non-motor, affective and emotion domains was carried out. ResultsPD patients showed lower IS than HS (0.58±0.2 vs 0.72±0.1; p=0.04). PD reported higher scores in scales assessing depression (Hamilton depression scale: 8.7±5.8 vs 6.2±7.5; p=0.04); anhedonia (Snaith–Hamilton Pleasure Scale: 26.8±9.7 vs 15.4±2.9; p=<0.001) and apathy (Apathy Evaluation Scale: 35.8±8.6 vs 27.8±6.8; p=0.008). No significant correlations were detected between IS and motor, non-motor, affective and emotion symptoms. ConclusionsPD patients have reduced interoceptive sensitivity. Future studies are encouraged to evaluate the importance of interoception in understanding the pathophysiology of affective/emotional symptoms in PD.

Attentional focus on subjective interoceptive experience in patients with fibromyalgia

ObjectivesThe hypervigilance model of pain perception states that patients with fibromyalgia (FM) have an enhanced sensitivity to aversive and non-aversive stimuli. Few studies have focused on enhanced interoceptive sensitivity in FM. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate spontaneous sensations (SPS) in FM. DesignSPS are those tingling, tickly and other kind of sensations usually perceived on the skin during periods of rest and without any external trigger. Therefore, we have investigated SPS by requiring participants to focus attention on each hand. MethodsEighteen patients with a diagnosis of FM and 18 matched healthy participants had to direct their gaze toward the hand tested for a period of 10s. Subsequently, they had to map and report the intensity, the number and the qualitative properties of sensations arising spontaneously. Finally, participants had to fill out questionnaires assessing cognitive and affective status that may influence the interoceptive sensations feedback. ResultsPatients with FM perceived SPS as significantly more intense than controls did. Additionally, SPS were perceived by the FM group as occupying an overall larger area on the hand than those reported by controls. Importantly, entering scores of pain and catastrophism as covariates produced a relative effect on the feeling of SPS. ConclusionsThe outcome of this study supports the generalized hypervigilance model, suggesting that patients with FM have a perceptual style of amplification of non-aversive interoceptive stimulation, modulated by pain and catastrophizing. This is discussed in relationship to interoceptive awareness.

Methodological recommendations for a heartbeat detection-based measure of interoceptive sensitivity.

Heartbeat detection tasks are often used to measure cardiac interoceptive sensitivity-the ability to detect sensations from one's heart. However, there is little work to guide decisions on the optimum number of trials to use, which should balance reliability and power against task duration and participant burden. Here, 174 participants completed 100 trials of a widely used heartbeat detection task where participants attempt to detect whether presented tones occurred synchronously or asynchronously with their heartbeats. First, we quantified measurement reliability of the participant's accuracy derived from differing numbers of trials of the task using a correlation metric; we found that at least 40-60 trials were required to yield sufficient reliability. Next, we quantified power by simulating how the number of trials influenced the ability to detect a correlation between cardiac interoceptive sensitivity and other variables that differ across participants, including a variable measured from our sample (body mass index) as well as simulated variables of varying effect sizes. Using these simulations, we quantified the trade-offs between sample size, effect size, and number of trials in the heartbeat detection task such that a researcher can easily determine any one of these variables at given values of the other two variables. We conclude that using fewer than 40 trials is typically insufficient due to poor reliability and low power in estimating an effect size, although the optimal number of trials can differ by study.

Interoceptive sensitivity facilitates both antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation strategies

The ability to perceive bodily signals (interoceptive sensitivity) modulates emotional experience. However, there is scarce evidence that interoceptive sensitivity also modulates the use of emotion regulation strategies. The present study investigated whether individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity are associated with the habitual use of two main emotion regulation strategies: reappraisal (antecedent-focused) and suppression (response-focused). All participants (N=402) completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and underwent the heartbeat perception task. Individuals with higher interoceptive sensitivity showed both greater habitual reappraisal and suppression use compared to those with lower interoceptive sensitivity. These findings suggest that better detection of ones' bodily signals facilitates the selection and implementation of antecedent-focused as well as response-focused emotion regulation strategies.

When interoception helps to overcome negative feelings caused by social exclusion.

Social exclusion affects mental and physical health. The ability to regulate emotional responses to social exclusion is therefore essential for our well-being. As individual differences in detecting bodily signals (interoceptive sensitivity, IS) have been associated with the ability of emotion regulation, we aimed at exploring whether IS fosters coping with social exclusion and flexibility in emotion regulation. The first study investigated subjective feelings and behavioral affiliation tendencies in response to ostracism using a cyberball paradigm. Sixty-nine participants were assessed who differed with respect to IS. The second study examined habitual emotion regulation processes focusing on suppression and reappraisal as well as IS in 116 participants. Main results were that the effect of ostracism on distress and behavioral affiliation tendencies were qualified by IS—being ostracized had less impact on participants with stronger IS. Furthermore, Study 2 revealed that IS was associated with habitually stronger emotion regulation strategies. We conclude that having access to bodily signals helps (IS) reducing aversive states provoked by social exclusion, probably due to the fact that IS is associated with emotion regulation strategies.

Interaction of physical activity and interoception in children.

Background: Physical activity (PA) is associated with positive health outcomes, whereas physical inactivity is related to an increased risk for various health issues including obesity and cardiovascular diseases. Previous research indicates that interindividual differences in the perception of bodily processes (interoceptive sensitivity, IS) interact with the degree of PA in adults. Whether there is a similar relationship between PA and IS in children has not been investigated yet. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the interaction between IS and PA during physical performance tasks and in everyday situations. Methods: IS was assessed using a heartbeat perception task in a sample of 49 children within the health promotion program “Join the Healthy Boat” which is implemented in several primary schools in the southwest of Germany. PA was examined using a physical performance task, assessing the distance covered during a standardized 6-min run. In a subsample of 21 children, everyday PA was measured by a multi-sensor device (Actiheart, CamNtech, Cambridge, UK) during five consecutive days with more than 10 h of daily data collection. Results: Children with higher IS performed better in the physical performance task. Additionally, based on energy expenditure defined as metabolic equivalents, IS was positively correlated with the extent of light PA levels in the morning and afternoon. Conclusion: Our findings reveal that IS interacts positively with the degree of PA in children supporting the idea that interoception is important for the self-regulation of health-related behavior.

The roles of interoceptive sensitivity and metacognitive interoception in panic.

BackgroundInteroception refers to the ability to sense body signals. Two interoceptive dimensions have been recently proposed: (a) interoceptive sensitivity (IS) –objective accuracy in detecting internal bodily sensations (e.g., heartbeat, breathing)–; and (b) metacognitive interoception (MI) –explicit beliefs and worries about one’s own interoceptive sensitivity and internal sensations. Current models of panic assume a possible influence of interoception on the development of panic attacks. Hypervigilance to body symptoms is one of the most characteristic manifestations of panic disorders. Some explanations propose that patients have abnormal IS, whereas other accounts suggest that misinterpretations or catastrophic beliefs play a pivotal role in the development of their psychopathology. Our goal was to evaluate these theoretical proposals by examining whether patients differed from controls in IS, MI, or both. Twenty-one anxiety disorders patients with panic attacks and 13 healthy controls completed a behavioral measure of IS motor heartbeat detection (HBD) and two questionnaires measuring MI.FindingsPatients did not differ from controls in IS. However, significant differences were found in MI measures. Patients presented increased worries in their beliefs about somatic sensations compared to controls. These results reflect a discrepancy between direct body sensing (IS) and reflexive thoughts about body states (MI).ConclusionOur findings support the idea that hypervigilance to body symptoms is not necessarily a bottom-up dispositional tendency (where patients are hypersensitive about bodily signals), but rather a metacognitive process related to threatening beliefs about body/somatic sensations.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12993-015-0058-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Insula tuning towards external eating versus interoceptive input in adolescents with overweight and obesity

This study was aimed to examine if adolescent obesity is associated with alterations of insula function as indexed by differential correlations between insula activation and perception of interoceptive feedback versus external food cues. We hypothesized that, in healthy weight adolescents, insula activation will positively correlate with interoceptive sensitivity, whereas in excess weight adolescents, insula activation will positively correlate with sensitivity towards external cues. Fifty-four adolescents (age range 12–18), classified in two groups as a function of BMI, excess weight (n = 22) and healthy weight (n = 32), performed the Risky-Gains task (sensitive to insula function) inside an fMRI scanner, and completed the heartbeat perception task (measuring interoceptive sensitivity) and the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (measuring external eating as well as emotional eating and restraint) outside the scanner. We found that insula activation during the Risky-Gains task positively correlated with interoceptive sensitivity and negatively correlated with external eating in healthy weight adolescents. Conversely, in excess weight adolescents, insula activation positively correlated with external eating and negatively correlated with interoceptive sensitivity, arguably reflecting obesity related neurocognitive adaptations. In excess weight adolescents, external eating was also positively associated with caudate nucleus activation, and restrained eating was negatively associated with insula activation. Our findings suggest that adolescent obesity is associated with disrupted tuning of the insula system towards interoceptive input.

Implicit Bodily-self Recognition and Interoceptive Sensitivity in Restrictive Anorexia Nervosa

Introduction Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is characterized by body-size overestimation that reflects a distortion of body-representation. Self-body recognition can be both implicit and explicit. The former is based on cognitive and perceptual mechanisms, the latter relies on motor simulation. Previous studies showed that participants, when submitted to a hand laterality judgment task (Implicit task) that required mental rotation showed better performances when the stimuli consisted of their own rather than other's hand (self-advantage). By contrast, the self-advantage was absent when self-recognition (Explicit task) was explicitly required. Objectives This study aimed to investigate whether the overestimation of anorexic's own body size extended to the motor representation of the bodily-self influencing the implicit self-advantage. Furthermore, we assessed the possible relationship between the implicitly recognition of one's own body part and Interoceptive Sensitivity (IS; sensitivity to stimuli originating inside of the body). Methods Healthy Controls (HC) and restrictive AN patients were submitted both to Implicit and Explicit tasks with self and other's hands presented in the original size or modified to look fatter or thinner. We also assessed participants’ IS by means of a heartbeat perception task. Results As previously reported, HC showed specific self-advantage effect only when a motor simulation is required. Furthermore higher IS is related to faster performances only in the implicit task in which a mental motor rotation. The differences between AN patients and HC concerning IS and bodily-self recognition will be also discussed.

Mindfulness Meditation and Paying Attention to the Heart: Preliminary Findings Regarding Improvements in Interoception after 10-days Intensive Vipassana Meditation.

Event Abstract Back to Event Mindfulness Meditation and Paying Attention to the Heart: Preliminary Findings Regarding Improvements in Interoception after 10-days Intensive Vipassana Meditation. Jonathan R. Krygier1*, James A. Heathers1, 2, Andrew H. Kemp1 and Maree J. Abbott1 1 The University of Sydney, Psychology, Australia 2 Poznań University of Medical Sciences, Department of Cardiology and Intensive Therapy, Poland Interoception - a self-perception of physiological activity often indexed by the ability to accurately determine one’s own heart rate without taking a pulse - is increasingly being regarded as important for understanding emotion. Individual differences in interoceptive awareness have been linked to increased emotional reactivity (Herbert et al., 2007) and ability to regulate emotions (Füstös et al., 2012), but also greater trait-anxiety (Pollatos et al., 2007) and pain sensitivity (Pollatos et al., 2012). Interoception and ways to modify interoceptive awareness remain poorly understood. This study investigated the ability of Vipassana meditation - concerned with awareness of bodily sensations and mental states – to improve interoceptive awareness. As part of a larger study into the physiological effects of Vipassana meditation, 57 participants without formal training in meditation who had signed up for an intensive 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat were tested twice approximately a fortnight apart; either before and after the retreat (Novice group: 42 participants); or twice before the retreat (Control group: 15 participants). At each testing session, participants attempted a standard heart beat detection task. Interoceptive awareness was significantly improved in the Novice group after the Vipassana retreat (F1,41=7.01, p = .011, η2p =.146). This is not likely to be a simple practice effect, since no such change was observed in the Control group (F1,41=0.54, p = .478, η2p =.043), nor was there a change in anxiety ratings for either group (p>.05). In conclusion, despite some recent findings to the contrary, meditative practices may have the ability not only to improve self-perceived interoceptive sensitivity, but also objectively measured interoceptive awareness. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the John Templeton Foundation for their support of this research and the Vipassana Meditation Centre for assisting with the recruitment of participants. References Füstös, J., Gramann, K., Herbert, B. M., & Pollatos, O. (2013). On the embodiment of emotion regulation: interoceptive awareness facilitates reappraisal. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 8(8), 911-917. Herbert, B. M., Pollatos, O., & Schandry, R. (2007). Interoceptive sensitivity and emotion processing: an EEG study. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 65(3), 214-227. Pollatos, O., Herbert, B. M., Kaufmann, C., Auer, D. P., & Schandry, R. (2007). Interoceptive awareness, anxiety and cardiovascular reactivity to isometric exercise. International journal of psychophysiology, 65(2), 167-173. Pollatos, O., Füstös, J., & Critchley, H. D. (2012). On the generalised embodiment of pain: how interoceptive sensitivity modulates cutaneous pain perception. PAIN®, 153(8), 1680-1686. Keywords: Vipassana, Meditation, interoception, Interoceptive Awareness, Emotion Regulation, Body awareness, contemplative practice, mindfulness Conference: ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Sydney, Australia, 2 Dec - 4 Dec, 2015. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Psychophysiology Citation: Krygier JR, Heathers JA, Kemp AH and Abbott MJ (2015). Mindfulness Meditation and Paying Attention to the Heart: Preliminary Findings Regarding Improvements in Interoception after 10-days Intensive Vipassana Meditation.. Conference Abstract: ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.219.00026 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 25 Oct 2015; Published Online: 30 Nov 2015. * Correspondence: Mr. Jonathan R Krygier, The University of Sydney, Psychology, Sydney, Australia, jonathan.krygier@sydney.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Jonathan R Krygier James A Heathers Andrew H Kemp Maree J Abbott Google Jonathan R Krygier James A Heathers Andrew H Kemp Maree J Abbott Google Scholar Jonathan R Krygier James A Heathers Andrew H Kemp Maree J Abbott PubMed Jonathan R Krygier James A Heathers Andrew H Kemp Maree J Abbott Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Perceiving one's body shapes empathy

BackgroundEmpathy is a basic human ability with affective and cognitive facets and high interindividual variability. Accurately detecting one's internal body signals (interoceptive sensitivity) strongly contributes to the awareness of oneself and is known to interact with emotional and cognitive processes. This study investigated whether interoceptive sensitivity (i.e., heartbeat perception task) shapes affective and cognitive empathy. MethodsNinety-three participants were asked to report the valence of their feelings, as well as the degree of compassion, arousal, and distress they felt in response to pictures depicting other people in pain or in non-pain situations. Participants also had to estimate how painful the situation was. ResultsMain results showed that greater interoceptive sensitivity enhanced the estimated degree of pain (cognitive empathy), as well as arousal and feelings of compassion (affective empathy), in response to painful pictures. ConclusionsThe accurate perception of bodily states and their representation shape both affective and cognitive empathy. This perception enables us to feel more compassion for another person and to evaluate the pain that they experience as being more intense.

Increased brain response to appetitive tastes in the insula and amygdala in obese compared with healthy weight children when sated.

ObjectiveThere is evidence of altered neural taste response in female adolescents who are obese, and in adolescents who are at risk for obesity. To further understand risk factors for the development of overeating and obesity, we investigated response to tastes of sucrose and water in 23 obese and healthy weight children.Methods and designThirteen healthy weight (HW) and 10 obese (OB) 8–12 year old children underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while tasting sucrose and water. Additionally, children completed an eating in the absence of hunger paradigm and a sucrose liking task.ResultsA region of interest analysis revealed an elevated BOLD response to taste (sucrose and water) within the bilateral insula and amygdala in OB children relative to HW children. Whole brain analyses revealed a group by condition interaction within the paracingulate, medial frontal, middle frontal gyri, and right amygdala: post hoc analyses suggested an increased response to sucrose for OB relative to HW children, whereas HW children responded more strongly to water relative to sucrose. In addition, OB children, relative to HW, tended to recruit the right putamen as well as medial and lateral frontal and temporal regions bilaterally.ConclusionThis study showed increased reactivity in the amygdala and insula in the OB compared to HW children, but no functional differentiation in the striatum, despite differences in the striatum previously seen in older samples. These findings support the concept of the association between increased neural processing of food reward in the development of obesity, and raise the possibility that emotional and interoceptive sensitivity could be an early vulnerability in obesity.

Interoceptive sensitivity, body image dissatisfaction, and body awareness in healthy individuals.

Relationships among interoceptive sensitivity (IS), body image dissatisfaction, body mass index (BMI), and self-reported body awareness were investigated in a cross-sectional study. Eighty-two Norwegian high school students and 70 Hungarian undergraduate university students participated in the study. Subjects completed two questionnaires (Body Image Ideals Questionnaire - BIQ; Body Awareness Questionnaire - BAQ) followed by the assessment of interoceptive sensitivity using the Mental Tracking Method (MTM). An inverse, medium-level relationship between body image dissatisfaction and IS was found in both the Norwegian and the Hungarian samples. The relationships between IS and self-reported body awareness, and between body image dissatisfaction and BMI were uniformly non-significant in both samples. Predictors of body image dissatisfaction were resting heart rate, gender, and IS in the regression analysis after controlling for BMI, age, and nationality. The negative relationship between IS and body image dissatisfaction described in patients with anorexia nervosa also exists in healthy individuals. There is no direct connection between IS and self-reported body awareness.

Interoceptive sensitivity predicts performance of event-based prospective memory: Evidence from cardiovascular reactivity

Interoceptive sensitivity predicts performance of event-based prospective memory: Evidence from cardiovascular reactivity

On the Interaction of Self-Regulation, Interoception and Pain Perception

Background: Interoceptive processes were found to be associated with better self-regulation capacities in healthy participants. Further empirical research suggests that interoceptive sensitivity is also important for the perception of pain both in healthy participants and in somatoform patients. Nevertheless, little is known about the interaction of interoceptive processes and self-regulation for pain. We therefore conducted a study examining the interaction of interoception and self-regulation in somatoform patients. Methods: We investigated interoceptive sensitivity and self-regulatory capacities in 30 somatoform patients and 30 healthy controls when experimentally assessing pain threshold and pain tolerance. Results: Interoceptive sensitivity was associated with better self-regulation capacities. Somatoform patients exhibited a significantly reduced interoceptive sensitivity and reduced self-regulatory capacities as assessed by self-report. Additionally, pain tolerance was significantly increased in somatoform patients as compared to controls. Conclusions: Our findings highlight that interoceptive sensitivity differentially interacts with pain and self-regulation both in healthy participants and somatoform patients. This might provide ideas for novel therapeutic interventions, e.g. a combined training of interoceptive sensitivity with certain aspects of self-regulation.

Neuroimaging and psychophysiological investigation of the link between anxiety, enhanced affective reactivity and interoception in people with joint hypermobility.

Objective: Anxiety is associated with increased physiological reactivity and also increased “interoceptive” sensitivity to such changes in internal bodily arousal. Joint hypermobility, an expression of a common variation in the connective tissue protein collagen, is increasingly recognized as a risk factor to anxiety and related disorders. This study explored the link between anxiety, interoceptive sensitivity and hypermobility in a sub-clinical population using neuroimaging and psychophysiological evaluation.Methods: Thirty-six healthy volunteers undertook interoceptive sensitivity tests, a clinical examination for hypermobility and completed validated questionnaire measures of state anxiety and body awareness tendency. Nineteen participants also performed an emotional processing paradigm during functional neuroimaging.Results: We confirmed a significant relationship between state anxiety score and joint hypermobility. Interoceptive sensitivity mediated the relationship between state anxiety and hypermobility. Hypermobile, compared to non-hypermobile, participants displayed heightened neural reactivity to sad and angry scenes within brain regions implicated in anxious feeling states, notably insular cortex.Conclusions: Our findings highlight the dependence of anxiety state on bodily context, and increase our understanding of the mechanisms through which vulnerability to anxiety disorders arises in people bearing a common variant of collagen.

Neural correlates of error processing reflect individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity

Although self-monitoring is an important process for adaptive behaviors in multiple domains, the exact relationship among different internal monitoring systems is unclear. Here, we aimed to determine whether and how physiological monitoring (interoception) and behavioral monitoring (error processing) are related to each other. To this end we examined within-subject correlations among measures representing each function. Score on the heartbeat counting task (HCT) was used as a measure of interoceptive awareness. The amplitude of two event-related potentials (error-related negativity [ERN] and error-positivity [Pe]) elicited in error trials of a choice-reaction task (Simon task) were used as measures of error processing. The Simon task presented three types of stimuli (objects, faces showing disgust, and happy faces) to further examine how emotional context might affect inter-domain associations. Results showed that HCT score was robustly correlated with Pe amplitude (the later portion of error-related neural activity), irrespective of stimulus condition. In contrast, HCT score was correlated with ERN amplitude (the early component) only when participants were presented with disgust-faces as stimuli, which may have automatically elicited a physiological response. Behavioral data showed that HCT score was associated with the degree to which reaction times slowed after committing errors in the object condition. Cardiac activity measures indicated that vigilance level would not explain these correlations. These results suggest a relationship between physiological and behavioral monitoring. Furthermore, the degree to which behavioral monitoring relies on physiological monitoring appears to be flexible and depend on the situation.

Interoceptive sensitivity, body weight and eating behavior in children: a prospective study.

Previous research indicates that interindividual differences in the ability to perceive one's own bodily signals (interoceptive sensitivity, IS) are associated with disordered eating behavior and weight problems. But representative and prospective data in children are lacking and therefore, the exact nature of these observed associations remains unclear. Data on IS measured by heartbeat perception ability in 1657 children between 6 and 11 years of age were collected on the basis of two measurement points with a year distance in time. Stability of the construct and its prospective association with different food approach behaviors [assessed via parent questionnaires (Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire and Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire)] as well as with weight status were analyzed via structural equation modeling. Main results were that only in overweight children external and emotional eating behavior were predictive for later IS, whereas no such relation was found in normal weight children. There was no direct relation between IS and body mass index. For the first time, we could show that eating behavior and IS in middle childhood are prospectively related to each other. But surprisingly, our data indicate that altered interoceptive processes rather follow than precede non-adaptive eating behavior patterns in overweight children. This suggests a possible crucial role of faulty learning mechanisms in eating behavior early in life, undermining the later confidence in one's body.

High Thrill and adventure seeking is associated with reduced interoceptive sensitivity: evidence for an altered sex-specific homeostatic processing in high sensation seekers.

The personality trait of sensation seeking (SS) has been traditionally linked to the construct of exteroception, i.e. sensing of the outside world. Little is known about the relationship between SS and interoception, i.e. sensing originating in the body. Interoceptive sensations have strong affective and motivational components that may influence behaviors such as risk-taking in SS. This investigation examined whether interoceptive differences contribute to different behavioral characteristics in SS. Using an inspiratory resistive load breathing task, the response to an aversive interoceptive stimulus as a basic homeostatic process was studied in 112 subjects (n=74 females, 38 males). A linear-mixed model approach was used to examine the influence of thrill and adventure seeking (TAS) on the interoceptive response across three levels of breathing resistances (10, 20, 40 cmH2O/L/sec). High relative to low TAS individuals were less responsive in evaluating intensities of perceived choking with increasing inspiratory resistive loads. This effect was driven by male, but not female high TAS individuals and was particularly associated with reduced interoceptive sensitivity in males. The conceptualization of SS as primarily driven by exteroceptive stimuli can be expanded to a view of an altered homeostasis in SS, specifically in males.