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brain & behaviour 2 > Constructs, Measures and The Role of the Insular Cortex > Flashcards

Constructs, Measures and The Role of the Insular Cortex Flashcards

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1
Q

what is interoception?

A

internal bodily signals concerning physiological state of the body

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2
Q

what is the common neural pathway responsible in interoception?

A

spinothalamic pathway terminating in the insular cortex

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3
Q

what does physiological state modulate?

A

interoceptive signals modulate emotion and behaviour

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4
Q

what is a baroreception?

A

type of mechoreceptor (which detects the contraction of the heart)

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5
Q

what was emotional behaviour first evolved for?

A

to motivate actions to benefit the body

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6
Q

what is the primary function of emotional behaviour?

A

maintain homeostasis

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7
Q

as the cortex evolves and social environment behaviours become more complex, the body state still plays a role in motivation, what else can body state do?

A

override physical signals

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8
Q

How can scratch inhibit itch?

A
  • afferent signals of pain (priority) activates inhibitory interneurons which stops itch
  • GABA inhibits neurons firing (action potential) by causing hyper polarising (making the neurone more negative and stopping the itch)
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9
Q

how can we synchronise time stimuli with the cardiac cycle?

A
  • measure ECG with electrodes on the chest or a pulse oximeter
  • trigger stimuli in relation to the R wave (peak of heart contraction - systole) / you can time presentation of the stimuli to be in accordance with this R wave (synchrony - systole) or asynchronous (diastole) -> allows us to examine the role of a heart that’s working heart without actually having to cause arousal
  • do not change heart rate
  • Allows examination of physical state without accompanying emotion -> don’t have to put the patient in arousal

i.e. found fear faces were easily detected and intense when the heart was at systole

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10
Q

what are the three different behavioural constructs of interoception?

A
  • interoceptive accuracy
  • interoceptive sensibility
  • interoceptive awareness
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11
Q

what is interoceptive accuracy?

A

(sensitivity)
- how accurate an individual is at detecting and interpreting interoceptive signals when compared to objective measures

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12
Q

how can we measure interoceptive accuracy?

A

heartbeat monitoring tasks

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13
Q

what are some examples of interoceptive accuracy tasks?

A
  • heartbeat monitoring
  • heartbeat counting
  • heartbeat detection
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14
Q

how do the heartbeat monitoring task work?

A
  • mechanoreceptor respond to mechanical stimuli (when a muscle is contracting -> detect cardiac systole)
  • coronary mechanoreceptors detect changes in arterial blood pressure and generate afferent signals on each heartbeat -> which can be monitored
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15
Q

what is a mechanoreceptor

A

type of somatosensory receptors which relay extracellular stimulus to intracellular signal transduction through mechanically gated ion channels

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16
Q

what might individuals with high mechanoreceptive sensitivity be able to do?

A

feel and count their own heartbeats and estimate their heart rate

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17
Q

what is heartbeat counting task?

A

participants count heartbeats felt during a brief timeframe while their actual heartbeats are measures (via an ECG or pulse transducer)
- counted heartbeat will be compared with actual heartbeats

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18
Q

what the heartbeat detection task?

A
  • participants compare external stimuli with their actual heart beats (tones, visual stimuli)
  • determine if an external stimuli is in synchronous or asynchronous with their actual heart beat
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19
Q

what is an issue with heartbeat detection tasks?

A

most people perform at chance level unless trained

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20
Q

what is interoceptive sensibility?

A

the subjective experience of interoception i.e. how interoceptive signals are experienced irrespective of their objective reliability

  • subjective experience
  • how you feel about and interpret signals
  • different scales capture different constructs
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21
Q

what are some measures of interoceptive sensibility?

A

questionnaires i.e.
- Multidimensional Assessment for Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA): consisting of eight constructs
- Body Awareness Questionnaire

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22
Q

Example Items on the Multidimensional Assessment for Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) [this framework of multidimensional assessment for interoceptive awareness captures interoceptive sensibility]

A

Noticing: How much an individual is aware of their bodily sensations such as breathing and heart rate

Not-distracting: The tendency not to ignore or distract oneself from sensations of pain or discomfort from the body

Not-worrying: The tendency not to experience emotional distress or worry with sensations of pain or discomfort from the body

Attention regulation: The ability to sustain and control attention to bodily sensations

Emotional awareness: The awareness of the connection between body signals and emotional states

Self-regulation: The ability to regulate psychological distress by attention to bodily sensations

Body listening: The tendency to actively listen to the body for insight

Trusting: The experience of one’s body as safe and trustworthy

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23
Q

Example Items on the Body Awareness Questionnaire [also measuring interoceptive sensibility]

A
  • I notice differences in the way my body reacts to various foods.
  • I can always tell when I bump myself whether or not it will become a bruise.
  • I always know when I’ve exerted myself to the point where I’ll be sore the next day.
  • I am always aware of changes in my energy level when I eat certain foods.
  • I know in advance when I’m getting the flu.
  • I know I’m running a fever without taking my temperature.
  • I can distinguish between tiredness because of hunger and tiredness because of lack of sleep.
  • I can accurately predict what time of day lack of sleep will catch up with me.
  • I am aware of a cycle in my activity level throughout the day.
  • I don’t notice seasonal rhythms and cycles in the way my body functions.*
  • As soon as I wake up in the morning, I know how much energy I’ll have during the day.
  • I can tell when I go to bed how well I will sleep that night.
  • I notice distinct body reactions when I am fatigued.
  • I notice specific body responses to changes in the weather.
  • I can predict how much sleep I will need at night in order to wake up refreshed.
  • When my exercise habits change, I can predict very accurately how that will affect my energy level.
  • There seems to be a “best” time for me to go to sleep at night.
  • I notice specific bodily reactions to being overhungry.
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24
Q

what is interoceptive awareness?

A

the correspondence between objective accuracy and subjective reports
* a metacognitive awareness of one’s own interoceptive accuracy

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25
Q

what is metacognitive awareness?

A

how good you are at detecting signals
vs. how good you think you are at detecting signals

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26
Q

what does meta mean?

A

beyond (greek)

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27
Q

what is meta-cognition?

A
  • higher level of organisation -> thoughts and feelings about our thoughts and feelings
  • it’s a belief
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28
Q

so in terms of interoception (and metacognition)

A

we may have an interpreting of an interoceptive cue which is a conscious detection of heartbeat (as the cognition) but a belief i.e. ‘I’m bad at interpreting interoceptive signals’ -> so it’s out thoughts and feelings about being able to understand and detect our interoceptive

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29
Q

ways at which meta-cognition can vary:

A
  • interoceptive sensibility (belief at how good you are) -> good interoceptive awareness and good interoceptive accuracy (and good meta-realisation at detecting their interoceptive signals)

But if your awareness is low, you may have low accuracy -> think you’re really good but actually you are not and cannot associate nor detect your heartbeats

If your interoceptive awareness is good, but the rest is not, you will still be good because you are aware that you struggle to understand your interoceptive signals

30
Q

what are two neural signatures of interoception?

A

fMRI and EEG

31
Q

what is fMRI?

A

(blood oxygen level response)
* good spatial resolution (identified the insult)
* poor temporal resolution (no immediate response)
- when you time resolution with your heart rate, you get a greater response in the insult but don’t get the exact cortical response after the heartbeat due to bad temporal resolution

32
Q

what is an EEG?

A

(electrical signals detected by electrodes positioned on the scale)
* poor spatial resolution (cannot locate the insult - deep inside the brain)
* good temporal resolution (can time with heart rates)

33
Q

what is heartbeat evoked potential (HEP)

A

(event related potential (ERP))
* time locked to the R wave ~300ms latency
* cortical processing of cardiac activity

34
Q

Greater HEP magnitude was related to? (Pollatos & Schandry, 2004)

A

stronger cardiac perception

35
Q
  • Participants counted their felt heartbeats during EEG
  • Objectively measure heartbeats with ECG
  • Use recorded actual heartbeats for examining interoceptive accuracy and identifying HEP
  • Participants were divided into good and poor perceivers. What did they find?

[Pollatos & Schandry (2004)]

A
  • HEP magnitude was larger for good perceivers than poor perceivers
  • HEP magnitude (C4) positively correlated with accuracy of heartbeat detection

higher cortical index of each heartbeat -> similar to those with higher mechanoreceptors can perceive their signals

36
Q

Neural correlations of Interoception [Critchley et al., 2004]
* heartbeat detection task vs. external task in scanner
* played notes and were asked whether the notes were synchronous with their heartbeats (interoception)
* also asked whether the notes were all the same (exteroceptive)
- had to figure out whether the pitch frequency was identical / non-identical, along with whether the heart-note relation was desynchronised or synchronised.

what did they find?

A

when attending to heart rate (interoception) greater activation in the anterior insulation when detecting a mismatch between the notes and heartbeats

37
Q

[Critchley et al., 2004] when looking closer at the correlation between activity and the insult cortex, what was found?

A

insula activity correlated with accuracy of heartbeat detection and anxiety

38
Q

[Critchley et al., 2004] what did they find about structure differences?

A
  • grey matter volume in the insula correlated with accuracy of heart beat detection and interoceptive sensibility
  • decreased brain matter = poor performance
  • more brain matter = better performance on the heartbeat detection task
39
Q

what is insula latin for?

A

island

40
Q

what Is the insular lobe in-between?

A

basal ganglia and operculum

41
Q

where is the insula cortex located?

A

located deep within the lateral sulcus of the brain

42
Q

how can we find the insula lobe?

A

pull back the temporal lobe from the temporal-parietal; the insula cortex is underneath
- (pull back the temporal operculum = little lid [grey matter over grey matter] covered by grey matter of the opercular lobe)

43
Q

what is the insula associated with?

A

limbic system (emotion), drive, aware, processing (sense/smell), homeostasis functions i.e. hunger, pain, empathy, linked to motor functions etc

44
Q

the insula is associated with many cognitive and emotional tasks such as?

A
  • Phillips et al. 1998 – disgust
  • Seely et al. 2007 - salience
45
Q

the insula is associated with body related tasks such as?

A
  • Tsakiris et al. 2007 - body perception
  • Farrer et al. 2003 – action awareness (agency)
  • Critchley et al. 2004 – internal body signals
46
Q

where is the insula cortex located?

A

the hidden cortex is folded below the lateral sulcus (sylvia fissure)
* beneath opercula (lids) of the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes
* it is divided into an anterior and a posterior part by the central insular sulcus
^ these show some differences in how they are connected (posterior connectivity and anterior connectivity)

47
Q

what is posterior connectivity?

A

the posterior insular is connected to the posterior thalamus -> spinothalamic pathway and sensory afferents coming from the body -> important for detection of interoceptive signals (taking information from the external body)

48
Q

what is anterior-connectivity?

A

the anterior insula is connected to the limbic system and amygdala -> emotional-cognitive brain regions

49
Q

what about the middle of the Insula?

A

mix of anterior and posterior connectivity.

50
Q

how do interoceptive signals travel?

A

Interoceptive inputs enter the posterior insula and then connected to the mid and anterior for integration with other modalities

51
Q

within the insular cortex, there are afferents to topographical organised representations, what are some of these representations?

A
  • visceral insular cortex (interoception)
  • the gustatory cortex (the primary taste cortex)
  • the insular auditory field
  • somatosensory field
52
Q

what is the insular cortex responsible for receiving?

A

information about blood pressure and oxygenation, the timing and strength of the heartbeat etc.

53
Q

Further describe how the insula is responsible for top down control of autonomic functions

A

Top down control of autonomic functions / regulatory systems such as the regulating the heartbeat and blood pressure (sends out efferent information and is responsible for regulation reflexes i.e. baroreceptors regulate your heart-rate).

54
Q

where do efferent signals come from?

A

insular cortex -> back down the spino-thalamic pathway

55
Q

the insula cortex is, what?

A

an anatomical hub (central deep down) and a hub of an extensive network
- connectivity to extensive network across the brain and across modalities

56
Q

the insular cortex is involved in a wide range of other processes such as?

A
  • Pain (Tracey et al. 2000)
  • Emotion (Phan et al. 2002)
  • Cognition (Huettel et al. 2004)
  • Social (Eisenberger et al. 2003)
57
Q

the insula is important for (Craig, 2002)

A

subjective feeling states

58
Q

How does interoceptive experience map onto the insula [Avery et al. (2015)
* fMRI study
* interoceptive task - attend to viscera
* exteroceptive task - sweet vs neutral taste
* examined neural maps

What did they find?

A

interoceptive task was highlighted (anatomically) and associated with activity within the posterior insula whereas the exteroception task was associated with anterior insula (part of the brain responsible for other signals, not just interoception)
* Overlapping regions of the mid/posterior insular for Interoceptive and Gustatory maps
* Mid-insula is also involved in the hedonic (pleasant) response to food [so we’re more likely to seek it out again]
* May be partially mediated by the effect of post-ingestive caloric signals to condition flavour preferences
* Integration of visual, olfactory, and physiological signals to regulate food intake.

59
Q

so what can this tell us about the insula cortex?

A
  • Processes interoceptive information
  • Receives information (sensory afferents)
  • Regulates interoceptive processes (efferents)
  • Integrates interoceptive and exteroceptive information
  • Coherent experience of the body?
  • Although there is a distinction between interoception and exteroception we experience our body as a single entity
60
Q

If insular integrates sensory information in toa coherent experience, how does this relate to behaviour?
* Conditioned Taste Aversion (CTA) for sweet stimuli in rats
* Adding malaise (induced sickness) to saccharin (artificial sweetener) induce aversion of saccharin.
* Examined in vivo sweet and bitter maps in the rat gustatory cortex (insula) before conditioning, after conditioning and after extinction (get rid of association) [Accolla & Carleton, 2008]

A
  • CTA lead to a shift in sweet representation which shifted back following extinction
  • Topological maps of bitter and sweet converged when the rat had learned to avoid the saccharin
  • Changes in insular cortex maps corresponded with behaviour
61
Q

what can we conclude from Accolla & Carleton (2008) experiment?

A
  • The insula integrates experience into valence maps.
  • Insula integrates taste perception with physiological state and hedonic value.
  • Changes in the neural maps in the insula underpin behaviour
62
Q

Aversion probability happens in the insula cortex…:

A
  • Physiological information and Gustatory cortex
  • Integrates information for interpretation and valence (e.g. food aversions).
  • Don’t like a particular food, then you avoid it because your behaviour is shaped (evolutionary and emotionally) it to be bad
63
Q

how does craving incorporate into the insula cortex?

A
  • Integrates with key reward circuitry (e.g. Ventral striatum)
  • Linking physiological state with hedonic responses
  • Cravings = physiological urges
    • Food, drugs (nicotine)
  • Insular cortex links interoceptive, exteroceptive and cognitive/emotional processes.
  • Desire to maintain homeostasis (physiological need)
  • Associate physiological condition to emotional state leading to urges and addition
64
Q

how does the insula cortex relate to craving in smokers?

A
  • Compared smokers with insula lesions (N=19) to smokers with damage to other brain regions (N=50).
  • Smokers with insula damage >100 times more likely to be able to quite smoking without relapse because they comment on being like “body forgot the urge to smoke” -> damage caused the lack of desire to maintain homeostasis
65
Q

how does craving and addiction link to the insula?

A
  • insula implicated in conscious cue-induced urges
  • Urges associated with memories of body states
  • Encoding a representation of the body state with a hedonic response (high) and environment (e.g. seeing someone else smoke)
  • Links with reward networks - incentivises a goal for a specific state
  • Links to cognitive regions - help regulate attention
  • Withdrawal disturbs homeostasis - intensifies associations and cravings
66
Q

interoceptive accuracy

A

heartbeat detection

67
Q

interoceptive sensibility

A

questionnaires

68
Q

interoceptive awareness

A

correspondence between confidence and ability

69
Q

interoceptive processing is linked to activity in the?

A

insular cortex

70
Q

Insula is a hub for…

A

an extensive neural network connection interoceptive, exteroceptive, cognitive and emotional brain regions

71
Q

Plastic changes in integration of exteroceptive, interoceptive and affective signals are associated with…

A

changes in behaviour – including food aversions, cravings and even additiction

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