Interoception Tutorial

Question 1

what pathway do interoceptive afferents follow?

Answer 1

spinothalamic (neuroanatomical)

Question 1

what is interoception?

Answer 1

awareness and perception of internal bodily signals
- informs about physiological state of body

Question 2

what does interoception aim to maintain and via how?

Answer 2

homeostasis via somato-autonomic reflexes and motivational behaviour

Question 3

what was the initial view of interoception?

Answer 3

restrictive and purely visceral
* sherrington (1948) – information concerning functional state of the internal organs

Question 4

what is the new approach to interoception?

Answer 4

inclusive (beginning to include other aspects of bodily functions like pain): general homeostatic sensory capacity
* Craig (2002, 2003, 2008) – information concerning the broader physiological state and motivational needs of the body

Question 5

what are the 4 modalities of interoception? (what different physiological process might we use to perceive interoception?)

Answer 5

• Gastrointestinal
• Nociceptive (feeling of pain signals/burns/itch/sensory touch based)
• Thermoregulatory (awareness/recognition of body temperature changes)
• Cardiovascular (awareness of our breathing system and heartrate)

Question 6

what are the 3 facets of interoception?

Answer 6

• interoceptive sensibility
• interoceptive accuracy
• interoceptive awareness

Question 7

what is interoceptive sensibility?

Answer 7

• How interoceptive signals are detected, noticed and interpreted by the individual (as you experience it)
• Irrespective of how accurate they are (Garfinkel et al., 2015)

Question 8

what is interoceptive accuracy (sensitivity)?

Answer 8

accuracy of identifying interoceptive signals compared with an objective measurement

Question 9

what is interoceptive awareness?

Answer 9

• awareness of how good you are at recognising interoceptive sensations
• relationship between how good we think we are and how good we actually are
• combination of sensibility with accuracy

Question 10

how is interoceptive sensibility measured?

Answer 10

Self report, e.g. Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA; Mehling et al., 2012)

Question 11

how is interoceptive accuracy measured?

Answer 11

Behavioural tests, e.g. heart beat monitoring (HB counting/HB detection)
Neural measures, e.g. EEG/feeling your heart rate

Question 12

MAIA task (Interoceptive Sensibility) - a 32 item questionnaire:

What is strengths?

Answer 12

large sample, quick efficient, increased validity of results, increased generalisability, application in different populations)

Question 13

MAIA task (Interoceptive Sensibility) - a 32 item questionnaire:

What is limitations?

Answer 13

overly subjective, people may guess because they have to put themselves in a situation where they’ve felt a specific emotion

Question 14

what are some theoretical issues of interoceptive accuracy tasks?

Answer 14

• does cardiac interoception represent all interoceptive domains?
• could someone, for example with an eating disorder, have poorer gastrointestinal interoception than other interoceptive processes?
• perceiving heartbeats through different perceptive channels (i.e. wearing different clothes may make it more difficult to feel)
• impairments of interoception
• disorders and BMI

Question 15

what are some practical issues of interoceptive accuracy tasks like feeling your heartbeat?

Answer 15

• guessing - people tend to guess at roughly one per second
• silently counting in heartbeats and reporting at the end of the time elicits different estimations to reporting (tapping) each time a heartbeat is perceived
• Informing participants that it is OK to feel nothing can reduce guesses
• decision to confidently consider whether something is a heartbeat
• individual differences i.e. Gender

Question 16

interoceptive accuracy practical issues and their link to gender?

Answer 16

• females reported heightened attention to interoceptive signals compared to males
• females are less accurate at detecting these signals than males
• driven by physical and hormonal differences between sexes

Question 17

why is interoception important?

Answer 17

• awareness of physical symptoms is important for physical health maintaining homeostasis and associated with different medical conditions

Question 18

what is homeostasis?

Answer 18

physical equilibrium

Question 19

why is it important to understand differences in interoception?

Answer 19

to provide potential routes routes for support/treatment
- helping us to understand health disorders

Question 20

what happens to the heart when we intensely feel fear? (Garfinkel et al., 2014)

Answer 20

contracts

Question 21

what are emotions shaped by?

Answer 21

bodily state

Question 22

why it important to understand emotions and how they are shaped by bodily state?

Answer 22

important for developing understanding of anxiety disorders

• associated with increased perception of cardiovascular activity

Question 23

what does interoception play a key role in? (Jacquemot & Park, 2020)

Answer 23

Anorexia Nervosa (and other Eds)
- development and treatment

Question 24

what is the link between interoception and schizophrenia? (Yao & Thakkar, 2021)

Answer 24

interoception and exteroception can play a role in positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia

Question 25

who gives a comprehensive summary of ‘quite a few’ meanings of interoception?

Answer 25

Kahlsa et al. (2018)