Balancing the “inner” and the “outer” self: Interoceptive sensitivity modulates self–other boundaries.

Interoception refers to the sensing of signals concerning the internal state of the body. Individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity are proposed to account for differences in affective processing, including the expression of anxiety. The majority of investigations of interoceptive accuracy focus on cardiac signals, typically using heartbeat detection tests and self-report measures. Consequently, little is known about how different organ-specific axes of interoception relate to each other or to symptoms of anxiety. Here, we compare interoception for cardiac and respiratory signals. We demonstrate a dissociation between cardiac and respiratory measures of interoceptive accuracy (i.e. task performance), yet a positive relationship between cardiac and respiratory measures of interoceptive awareness (i.e. metacognitive insight into own interoceptive ability). Neither interoceptive accuracy nor metacognitive awareness for cardiac and respiratory measures was related to touch acuity, an exteroceptive sense. Specific measures of interoception were found to be predictive of anxiety symptoms. Poor respiratory accuracy was associated with heightened anxiety score, while good metacognitive awareness for cardiac interoception was associated with reduced anxiety. These findings highlight that detection accuracies across different sensory modalities are dissociable and future work can better delineate their relationship to affective and cognitive constructs. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health’.

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Closing the Gap between the Inside and the Outside: Interoceptive Sensitivity and Social Distances

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0075758 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 8 (10) ◽

pp. e75758 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Francesca Ferri ◽

Martina Ardizzi ◽

Marianna Ambrosecchia ◽

Vittorio Gallese

Keyword(s):

Interoceptive Sensitivity ◽

Closing The Gap

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On the generalised embodiment of pain: How interoceptive sensitivity modulates cutaneous pain perception

Pain ◽

10.1016/j.pain.2012.04.030 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 153 (8) ◽

pp. 1680-1686 ◽

Cited By ~ 61

Author(s):

Olga Pollatos ◽

Jürgen Füstös ◽

Hugo D. Critchley

Keyword(s):

Pain Perception ◽

Cutaneous Pain ◽

Interoceptive Sensitivity

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Just a heartbeat away from one's body: interoceptive sensitivity predicts malleability of body-representations

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2010.2547 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 278 (1717) ◽

pp. 2470-2476 ◽

Cited By ~ 238

Author(s):

Manos Tsakiris ◽

Ana Tajadura- Jiménez ◽

Marcello Costantini

Keyword(s):

Sensory Stimulation ◽

Body Part ◽

Body Awareness ◽

The Body ◽

Interoceptive Awareness ◽

Body Ownership ◽

Body Representations ◽

Monitoring Task ◽

Interoceptive Sensitivity ◽

First Time

Body-awareness relies on the representation of both interoceptive and exteroceptive percepts coming from one's body. However, the exact relationship and possible interaction of interoceptive and exteroceptive systems for body-awareness remain unknown. We sought to understand for the first time, to our knowledge, the interaction between interoceptive and exteroceptive awareness of the body. First, we measured interoceptive awareness with an established heartbeat monitoring task. We, then, used a multi-sensory-induced manipulation of body-ownership (e.g. Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI)) and we quantified the extent to which participants experienced ownership over a foreign body-part using behavioural, physiological and introspective measures. The results suggest that interoceptive sensitivity predicts the malleability of body representations, that is, people with low interoceptive sensitivity experienced a stronger illusion of ownership in the RHI. Importantly, this effect was not simply owing to a poor proprioceptive representation or differences in autonomic states of one's body prior to the multi-sensory stimulation, suggesting that interoceptive awareness modulates the online integration of multi-sensory body-percepts.

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The moderating influence of self-efficacy on interoceptive ability and counterintuitive decision making in officer cadets

Journal of Military Studies ◽

10.1515/jms-2016-0005 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 44-52 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ricardo G. Lugo ◽

Stefan Sütterlin ◽

Benjamin J. Knox ◽

Øyvind Jøsok ◽

Kirsi Helkala ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Cyber Security ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Task Characteristics ◽

Cyber Defense ◽

Cognitive Demands ◽

Demand Characteristics ◽

Key Factor ◽

Intuitive Decision Making ◽

Interoceptive Sensitivity

AbstractThe rapid technical progress in cyber threats and cyber security poses increased cognitive demands on cyber officers. The macrocognitive demand characteristics placed on the cyber officers exceed those in most common military contexts and are new in nature. Research on decision-making competence within the cyber domain is needed to identify strategies and give a better understanding of how these strategies can have consequences depending on task characteristics. Belief in one’s capabilities to handle a certain task has been shown to be a key factor for cognitive performance. This study investigated how high self-efficacy negatively moderated intuitive decision-making tendencies on performance when facing a problem that required counterintuitive strategies.Twenty-seven cyber officer cadets from the Norwegian Defence Cyber Academy participated in an experiment assessing self-efficacy, interoceptive sensitivity, and decision-making. Participants with high situational self-efficacy generally performed better, but this relationship was moderated by interoceptive sensitivity.The findings suggest potential detrimental effects of intuitive decision-making tendencies in combination with high self-efficacy. Implications for training and feedback structures in cyber defense are discussed.

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The Filter Detection Task for measurement of breathing-related interoception and metacognition

10.1101/2020.06.29.176941 ◽

2020 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Olivia K. Harrison ◽

Sarah N. Garfinkel ◽

Lucy Marlow ◽

Sarah Finnegan ◽

Stephanie Marino ◽

...

Keyword(s):

The Body ◽

Clinical Settings ◽

New Developments ◽

Decision Bias ◽

Psychological Conditions ◽

Regression Parameters ◽

Wide Range ◽

Interoceptive Sensitivity ◽

Hierarchical Statistical Model ◽

Interoceptive Accuracy

AbstractThe study of the brain’s processing of sensory inputs from within the body (‘interoception’) has been gaining rapid popularity in neuroscience, where interoceptive disturbances have been postulated to exist across a wide range of chronic physiological and psychological conditions. Here we present a task and analysis procedure to quantify specific dimensions of breathing-related interoception, including interoceptive sensitivity (accuracy), decision bias, metacognitive bias, and metacognitive performance. We describe a task that is tailored to methods for assessing respiratory interoceptive accuracy and metacognition, and pair this with an established hierarchical statistical model of metacognition (HMeta-d) to overcome significant challenges associated with the low trial numbers often present in interoceptive experiments. Two major new developments have been incorporated into this task analysis by pairing: (i) a novel adaptive algorithm to maintain task performance at 70-75% accuracy, and (ii) an extended metacognitive model developed to hierarchically estimate multiple regression parameters linking metacognitive performance to relevant (e.g. clinical) variables. We demonstrate the utility of both developments, using both simulated and empirical data from three separate studies. This methodology represents an important step towards accurately quantifying interoceptive dimensions from a simple experimental procedure that is compatible with the practical constraints in clinical settings. Both the task and analysis code are publicly available.

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Postprint: "Temporal matching between interoception and exteroception: electrophysiological responses in a heartbeat discrimination task"

10.31234/osf.io/sknxt ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Hirokata Fukushima

Keyword(s):

Discrimination Task ◽

Predictive Coding ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Neural Responses ◽

Cardiac Phase ◽

Behavioral Measures ◽

Electrophysiological Responses ◽

Interoceptive Sensitivity ◽

External Stimuli ◽

Healthy Participants

Recent studies on interoception emphasize the importance of multisensory integration between interoception and exteroception. One of the methods frequently applied for assessing interoceptive sensitivity is the heartbeat discrimination task, where individuals judge whether the timing of external stimuli (e.g., tones) are synchronized to their own heartbeat. Despite its extensive use in research, the neural dynamics underlying the temporal matching between interoceptive and exteroceptive stimuli in this task have remained unclear. The present study used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine the neural responses of healthy participants who performed a heartbeat discrimination task. We analyzed the differences between EEG responses to tones, which were likely to be perceived as “heartbeat-synchronous” (200 ms delayed from the R-wave) or “heartbeat-asynchronous” (0 ms delayed). Possible associations of these neural differentiations with task performance were also investigated. Compared with the responses to heartbeat-asynchronous tones, heartbeat-synchronous tones caused a relative decrease in early gamma-band EEG response and an increase in later P2 event-related potential (ERP) amplitude. Condition differences in the EEG/ERP measures were not significantly correlated with the behavioral measures. The mechanisms underlying the observed neural responses and the possibility of electrophysiological measurement of interoceptive sensitivity are discussed in terms of two perspectives: the predictive coding framework and the cardiac-phase-dependent baroreceptor function.

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