Interoception And Interoceptive Beliefs

“Positive interoceptive beliefs include beliefs that bodily signals are a valuable source of insight and that bodily signals, even unpleasant ones, are not necessarily distressing or detrimental. Many studies suggest that this comfortable, trusting mindset towards the body may ha...

“By necessity, the brain must constantly monitor and manage what is happening in the body (known as allostasis). The brain relies on afferent bodily signals to ensure that there are enough physiological resources (e.g., glucose, oxygen) for behavior at a...

Interoception is “the process by which the nervous system senses, interprets, and integrates signals originating from within the body, providing a moment-by-moment mapping of the body’s internal landscape across conscious and unconscious levels” (Khalsa et al., 2018).

“But each body has unique structural and functional variations shaped by epigenetics, environment, and lifestyle. This embodied variation helps determine more stable differences in the self (e.g., temperament) as well as brief within-person differences (e.g., bei...

“However, there are many other interoceptive differences that help determine when and how much some people experience their bodily signals more than other people. For instance, some people preferentially focus on interoceptive cues in how they describe and relate to the world. Some indivi...

“The brain, however, is not a perfect predictor of bodily meaning. Referred pain is one example. Other times, whether due to signal intensity or ambiguity, due to environmental distractions, etc., our brains might attribute bodily signals differently. Furthermore, because sometimes bodily...

“If your blood sugar dips, it’s important to make those metabolic signals more conscious as unpleasant hunger sensations, helping motivate you to eat. Conversely, if you’re under a prolonged stressor, minimizing conscious bodily sensations could help you better cope.”

“Interoception is central to many emotional processes. Both interoceptive skills (e.g., being more sensitive to or aware of specific bodily sensations) and interoceptive knowledge (e.g., meta-cognitive awareness, beliefs) likely matter. Higher interocepti...

Most of us don’t fully appreciate how the body matters until we experience illness, disease, or interoceptive dysfunction. But it is important to find a middle ground. On the one hand, people who over-focus on the body may be more likely to “over-detect” or overinterpret their bodily sign...

“The brain then must solve the puzzle of incoming bodily information by inferring the signal’s source (in our example, heart or arm?) and making coherent meaning out of it. It does this in many ways—by monitoring relevant hormone levels that cross the blood-brain barrier,...

It is believed that in 30 seconds, the human brain goes through roughly the same amount of information as the Hubble Space Telescope processes in 30 years. Part of that data comes from the world around us; another part comes from our inner world—the body. Indeed,...

"How much and which bodily signals become conscious is a complex question. Of course, it would be information overload if we were consciously aware of every little fluctuation in our body’s homeostatic parameters. Instead, conscious bodily sensations likely depend on...

“To counter a threat, the brain also needs to know the body’s available and reserved metabolic energy and any other relevant energy constraints (e.g., if the body is fighting off an infection). This vigilance helps the brain better coordinate an efficient response to whatever lif...

Psychologist Jennifer MacCormack investigates interoception, how it develops and ages, and how it interacts with bodily states like hunger to impact our emotions and behavior (such as feeling hangry).

"The brain and body are deeply interconnected”, MacCormack said in a rece...

“If we were to eavesdrop on the conversation between the brain and body, it might sound like two very chatty co-partners driving a car together (Body: ‘Oh, look, this and that are changing!’ Brain: ‘All good here. Maybe then turn this up and maintain that .’). Since the b...

“Many researchers have proposed that bodily awareness (the body’s position in space, i.e., proprioception, or internal bodily sensations like your heart beating, i.e., interoception) is an early, foundational part of our sense of self. The body constant...

“We often think in terms of dualities: emotion versus cognition, body versus mind, and peripheral versus central nervous system. While these divisions are useful in daily conversation and philosophical debates, we should be careful not to overlook how