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Brain and Behaviour 2 > Interoception > Flashcards

Interoception Flashcards

1
Q

What is interoception?

A
  • Interoception refers to the perception and awareness of internal bodily sensations:
    1) feelings from the body: sensory signals originating within the body
    2) Distinct from the 5 senses: focused on internal states rather than external stimuli
    3) Homeostasis: helps the body to maintain internal balance
    4) Foundation of physical self: contributes to the perception of being in control of one’s body
    5) Self-awareness: enhances self-awareness
    6) Emotional connection
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2
Q

Definitions of introspection (restrictive vs inclusive)

A
  • Restrictive: information concerning functional state of the internal organs
  • Inclusive: information concerning the broader physiological state and motivational needs of the body
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3
Q

Homeostasis

A
  • Physiological equilibrium
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4
Q

Anatomical pathway

A
  • Information about the physiological state of the body follows a similar pathway to the brain
  • Similar categories of afferent nerves
  • Signals that follow this pathway are classed as introspection
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5
Q

Afferents vs efferents

A
  • Afferents: sensory information from the body to the brain (sensory neurons)
  • Efferents: regulatory signals from the brain to the body (motor neurons)
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6
Q

Neural anatomical pathway: A-delta and C nerves

A
  • These are afferent nerves including:
    1) Nociceptors (pain)
    2) Thermorecpetors (temperature)
    3) Osmoreceptors (thirst)
    4) Baroreceptors (heart rate)
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7
Q

Myelination

A
  • This is a layer of insulation (fatty sheath) surrounding a neuron
  • It increases the efficiency of electrical transmission (nerve signals travel faster)
  • Unmyelinated neurons are comparatively slow
  • Myelinated nerves = nociceptors (pain)
  • Unmylinated = CT afferents (affective touch)
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8
Q

The structure of the dorsal horn

A
  • The dorsal horn is divided into physiologically distinct layers called laminae:
  • Lamina I: this is the most superficial layer, also called the marginal layer
  • Laminae II to IX: deeper layers involved in processing various sensory and motor functions
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9
Q

Key neural anatomical pathway steps

A

1) Afferent nerve projections: small-diameter nerves transmit interoceptive signals to lamina I of the dorsal horn in the spinal cord
2) Projection to the lateral spinothalamic tract: signals from lamina I cross over to the lateral spinothalamic tract
3) Projection to the brainstem and higher centres: lamina I send interoceptive signals to:
- Brainstem
- Thalamus: a sensory relay centre
- Hypothalamus: regulates homeostasis and autonomic functions
- Amygdala: processes emotion

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10
Q

The role of dorsal horn in reflex actions

A
  • Afferent projections from the dorsal horn provide the somato-automatic reflexes crucial for maintaining homeostasis
  • These are not only emergency mechanisms, but provide continuous feedback
  • Lamina I also receives descending (efferent) modulation for interoceptive signals
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11
Q

The insular cortex (the interoceptive cortex)

A
  • This is the cortical terminus of the pathway
  • It integrates sensory data to form a coherent sense of the body’s internal state
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12
Q

Itch-scratch cycle

A

1) Feelings of itch lead to the urge to scratch
2) Scratching the skin to alleviate the itch
3) Damage skin, release inflammatory chemicals
4) Stimulates nerve endings of itch afferents
5) This, again, leads to feelings of itch

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13
Q

Interoception and emotion

A
  • Intrinsic link between the physiological state of the body and emotion
  • Emotions can be felt in the body
  • Panic or excitement (heart rate)
  • Fear or surprise (muscle tension)
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14
Q

Nummenmaa et al (2018)

A
  • Thos study highlights the bodily basis of emotion, mapping how different emotions are associated with unique patterns of bodily sensations
  • Findings demonstrated that:
    > Emotions are not only cognitive or physiological phenomena but also physiological states perceived through interoception
    > These sensations form a somatic foundation for emotional experiences, connecting the mind and body

Understanding our emotions involves interpreting internal bodily signals

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15
Q

Alexithymia: ‘no words for emotion’

A
  • This is a physiological construct characterised by difficulties in identifying, describing and expressing emotions
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16
Q

Gut feeling

A
  • The interconnection between the gut and the brain is deeply rooted in our language
  • Neural network communicates with the brain about gastrointestinal homeostasis. As well as this, emotion motivation and decision making
  • Emotions can influence digestive system (bidirectional)
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17
Q

Where is the self?

A
  • Aristotle: believed the self was in the heart
  • Limanowski and Hecht (2011): head and heart
  • Alsmith and Longo (2014): between the head and the torso
18
Q

Interoception and behaviour

A
  • Emotional behaviours evolved to produce goal-directed actions that fulfil homeostatic needs of the body
  • How you feel can be moderated by physiological state of the body
  • How you feel can influence your behaviour
19
Q

Physiological motivations

A
  • Cognition takes place within the context of the body that needs to stay alive and be healthy
  • The brain evolved to regulate bodies within a social context
20
Q

Drive behaviour

A
  • This is behaviour with the aim of achieving homeostasis (desirable physical state)
21
Q

Garfinkel et al (2014): interoception, emotion and cardiac timing

A
  • This study investigates the relationship between interoception, cardiac timing and the perception of emotional stimuli. It highlights how the physiological state of the body influences emotional processing
  • Participants viewed neutral or fearful faces presented briefly
  • Stimuli presentation was time-locked to the cardiac cycle
    > Systole: the heart contracts, pumping blood (maximum cardiac effort)
    > Diastole: the heart relaxes, refilling with blood
  • Participants rated the emotional intensity of the faces
  • It was hypothesised that the timing of the stimuli within the cardiac cycle would modulate emotional intensity judgements and neural activity
    Key findings:
  • Systole: greater emotional intensity ratings of fear faces, as well as enhanced detection of threatening stimuli during peak cardiac effort
  • Diastole: trend for greater intensity ratings for neutral faces
  • Perception of threat dependent on level of physiological arousal
22
Q

Azevedo et al (2017): emotional states and racial stereotyping

A
  • Participants were primed with images of black or white faces before being presented with a decision-making task
  • The task involved identifying whether the target was holding a tool or weapon, with the decision timed relative to the cardiac cycle (during systole or diastole)
  • The results revealed that when participants were in systole (heart contraction), they were more likely to exhibit biased behaviour, specifically shooting unarmed black men often than unarmed white men
  • This indicates that physiological arousal amplified the activation of racial stereotypes and influenced decisions that might otherwise be more neutral
23
Q

Interoceptive accuracy (sensitivity)

A
  • How accurate an individual is at detecting and interpreting interoceptive signals when compared with objective measures (heartbeat monitoring tasks)
24
Q

Heartbeat counting task

A
  • Participants count heartbeats felt during a brief timeframe
  • Actual heartbeat measured (EEG, pulse transducer)
  • Relate counted heartbeats with actual heartbeats
25
Q

Heartbeat detection task

A
  • Participants compare external stimuli with their actual heartbeats
  • They then determine if an external stimuli is synchronous or asynchronous with their actual heartbeats
  • However, most people perform at chance level unless trained
26
Q

Multidimensional assessment of interoceptive awareness (MAIA)

A
  • A scale that measures interoceptive sensibility of individuals (how aware people are of their bodily sensations)
27
Q

Body awareness questionnaire

A
  • Attentiveness to normal, non-emotive body processes
  • The ability to detect small changes in normal functioning, and ability to anticipate bodily reactions
28
Q

Interoceptive awareness

A
  • The correspondence between objective interoceptive accuracy and subjective reports
  • A metacognitive awareness of one’s own interoceptive accuracy
  • How good you are at detecting signals
  • How good you think you are detecting signals
29
Q

Meta-cognition

A
  • This refers to thinking beyond basic cognition, or in other words, thinking about thinking
  • It involves reflecting on, monitoring and controlling your cognitive processes, like evaluating your own thoughts
30
Q

Example of cognition and meta-cognition (neuroticism)

A
  • Neuroticism is a personality traits characterised by tendencies toward anxiety, worry, rumination and guilt
  • Cognition: ‘I am neurotic’ represents a person’s belief about their own tendency toward these negative emotions
  • Meta-cognition: ‘I am worried about being too anxious or ruminative’ involves reflecting on one’s emotional or cognitive tendencies. It’s the awareness and interpretation of one’s emotional states
31
Q

Neuroimaging techniques to measure interoception: fMRI

A
  • This measures blood-oxygen levels which reflects neural activity
  • This method had good spatial resolution (detailed information about location of brain activity)
  • This method has poor temporal resolution (cannot capture immediate activity as blood flow takes a few seconds)
  • Key findings: the insula is consistently identified as a key region involved in interoception
32
Q

Neuroimaging techniques to measure interoception: EEG

A
  • This method detects electrical activity in the brain using electrodes placed on the scalp
  • It has poor spatial resolution (it cannot pinpoint specific brain regions involved)
  • It has good temporal resolution (allowing for precise tracking of brain’s response to stimuli in real-time)
33
Q

Neuroimaging techniques to measure interoception: HEP (heartbeat evoked potential)

A
  • An event-related potential (ERP) that looks at the brain’s response to heartbeat sensations
  • Pollatos and Schandry (2004): found that a larger HEP magnitude is related to a stronger cardiac perception (people who are better at perceiving their heartbeats show greater HEP responses
34
Q

Pollatos and Schandry (2004): combining EEG with ECG

A
  • Participants were asked to count their felt heartbeats during EEG recordings, while their actual heartbeats were recorded using ECG
  • This allowed for directly linking the neural signature of the heartbeat perception with interoceptive accuracy
  • Good perceivers of their heartbeat showed a larger HEP magnitude than poor receivers
  • HEP magnitude at C4 (a region on the scalp) was positively correlated with the accuracy of heartbeat detection.
35
Q

Critchley et al (2004): heartbeat detection task

A
  • Analysed the neural mechanisms underlying interocepetion
  • There were two primary tasks:
    1) Interoception (heartbeat detection task): participants had to detect whether notes were synchronous with their heartbeat
    2) Exteroception (external task): participants were asked whether the notes were all the same, without any perception of internal states
  • When participants attended to their heartbeat (interoception), there was greater activation in the anterior insula when there was a mismatch between the notes and their heartbeats. This suggest the insula plays a key role in detecting and processing mismatches in interoceptive signals
  • Stronger activity in insula correlated with better heartbeat detection
  • Individuals with higher anxiety levels might have heightened interoceptive sensitivity
  • Grey matter volume in the insula correlated with:
    1) Accuracy of heartbeat detection
    2) Interoceptive ability
36
Q

Insular cortex

A
  • Hidden cortex folded below the lateral sulcus
  • Anatomically divided into an anterior and a posterior part by the central insular sulcus
  • Interoceptive inputs enter the posterior insula (posterior thalamus) and then connected to the mid and anterior for integration with other modalities (limbic system and amygdala)
  • Receives information about blood pressure and oxygenated, the timing and strength of the heartbeat
  • Top down control of autonomic functions such as the regulation of heartbeat and blood pressure
37
Q

Avery et al (2015): explore how the brain processes interoception

A
  • Use of FMRI during interoceptive task and exteroceptive task
  • Focused on neural maps for these two types of sensory processing were organised in the brain
    1) Interoception vs exteroception:
  • Interoception was associated with activation in the posterior insula
  • Exteroception was linked to activation in the anterior insula
  • The mid/posterior insula showed overlapping activation for both tasks
    2) Mid-insula:
  • Also involved in the hedonic (pleasant) response to food
  • This may be partially mediated by the effect of post-ingestive caloric signals to condition flavour preferences
38
Q

Accolla and Carleton (2008): CTA

A
  • This study involved conditioned taste aversion (CTA) for sweet stimuli in rats
  • The rats were given an artificial sweetener (saccharin) which was paired with induced sickness (malaise)
  • This pairing led to the rats developing an aversion to the saccharine, a learned response where the rats avoid the taste due it’s association with sickness
  • The researchers examined the gustatory maps in the rats insula:
    1) Before conditioning
    2) After conditioning
    3) After extinction
  • After conditioning, the rat’s brains changed how they processed the sweet stimulus (saccharine), reflecting aversion
  • Before conditioning, sweet and bitter tastes were processed in distinct regions of the insula. After conditioning, the maps for sweet and bitter converged, indicating the rats associated sweet taste with the negative experience, blending it with the bitter response (which is often associated with unpleasantness
  • This shows that changes in insular cortex maps corresponded with behaviour
  • The insula integrates experience into valence maps, with changes in the neural maps in the insula underpin behaviour
39
Q

Cravings

A
  • Integrates with key reward circuitry
  • Cravings = physiological urges (food, drugs, nicotine)
  • Insula is implicated in addiction because it integrates bodily sensations with the cognitive and emotional aspects of craving or desire
  • Addictive behaviours are driven by changes in the body’s physiological state (e.g withdrawal) and the emotional experience associated with those states
  • The insula helps associate the physiological discomfort of withdrawal or craving with the desire to act in ways that might alleviate those symptoms, creating a feedback loop that drives addictive behaviour
40
Q

Mental health

A
  • Allows accurate experience of the body and the self
  • Impairment of this characteristic of many mental health conditions
  • Interoceptive symptoms are thought to be prominent features of many psychiatric disorders e.g anxiety
41
Q

Adams et al (2022): meta-analysis of interoceptive accuracy and anxiety

A
  • Meta-analysis of interoceptive accuracy tasks and anxiety
  • He found no relationship between IA and anxiety
  • No effect of task or sample

Brain and Behaviour 2 (4 decks)

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