Frontiers in psychology
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Interoception can be broadly defined as the sense of signals originating within the body. As such, interoception is critical for our sense of embodiment, motivation, and well-being. And yet, despite its importance, interoception remains poorly understood within modern science. ⋯ To this end, we introduce an expanded taxonomy of interoceptive processes, arguing that many of these processes can be understood through an emerging predictive coding model for mind-body integration. The model, which describes the tension between expected and felt body sensation, parallels contemplative theories, and implicates interoception in a variety of affective and psychosomatic disorders. We conclude that maladaptive construal of bodily sensations may lie at the heart of many contemporary maladies, and that contemplative practices may attenuate these interpretative biases, restoring a person's sense of presence and agency in the world.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2015
Illusory visual motion stimulus elicits postural sway in migraine patients.
Although the perception of visual motion modulates postural control, it is unknown whether illusory visual motion elicits postural sway. The present study examined the effect of illusory motion on postural sway in patients with migraine, who tend to be sensitive to it. ⋯ The patients swayed more than the controls when they closed their eyes immediately after viewing the illusory motion (Experiment 1), and they swayed less than the controls when they closed their eyes 30 s after viewing it (Experiment 2). These results suggest that static visual stimuli with illusory motion can induce postural sway that may last for at least 30 s in patients with migraine.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2015
Heartfelt empathy? No association between interoceptive awareness, questionnaire measures of empathy, reading the mind in the eyes task or the director task.
Interoception, defined as afferent information arising from within the body, is the basis of all emotional experience and underpins the 'self.' However, people vary in the extent to which interoceptive signals reach awareness. This trait modulates both their experience of emotion and their ability to distinguish 'self' from 'other' in multisensory contexts. The experience of emotion and the degree of self/other distinction or overlap are similarly fundamental to empathy, which is an umbrella term comprising affect sharing, empathic concern and perspective-taking (PT). ⋯ This striking lack of direct links has important consequences for hypotheses about the extent to which empathy is necessarily embodied. Finally, to assess cognitive PT ability, which specifically requires self/other distinction, we used the 'Director Task' but found no relationship. We conclude that the abilities that make up empathy are potentially related to IA in a variety of conflicting ways, such that a direct association between IA and various components of empathy has yet to be established.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2015
Music reduces pain and increases resting state fMRI BOLD signal amplitude in the left angular gyrus in fibromyalgia patients.
Music reduces pain in fibromyalgia (FM), a chronic pain disease, but the functional neural correlates of music-induced analgesia (MIA) are still largely unknown. We recruited FM patients (n = 22) who listened to their preferred relaxing music and an auditory control (pink noise) for 5 min without external noise from fMRI image acquisition. Resting state fMRI was then acquired before and after the music and control conditions. ⋯ The post-hoc seed-based functional connectivity analysis of the lAnG showed found higher connectivity after listening to music with right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rdlPFC), the left caudate (lCau), and decreased connectivity with right anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), right supplementary motor area (rSMA), precuneus and right precentral gyrus (rPreG). Pain intensity (PI) analgesia was correlated (r = 0.61) to the connectivity of the lAnG with the rPreG. Our results show that MIA in FM is related to top-down regulation of the pain modulatory network by the default mode network (DMN).
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2015
Resting heart rate variability predicts self-reported difficulties in emotion regulation: a focus on different facets of emotion regulation.
The Model of Neurovisceral Integration suggests that vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) represents a psychophysiological index of inhibitory control and thus, is associated with emotion regulation capacity. Over the past decade, growing empirical evidence supports this notion, showing that those with higher resting vmHRV can regulate negative emotions more adequately. However, to our knowledge, no study has previously examined how resting vmHRV may relate to everyday perceived difficulties in emotion regulation. ⋯ Controlling for potential covariates (including both trait anxiety and rumination), results revealed a negative relationship between resting vmHRV and DERS such that lower resting vmHRV was associated with greater difficulties in emotional regulation, especially a lack of emotional clarity and impulse control, as indicated by the respective subscales of the DERS. These findings provide further evidence for the Neurovisceral Integration Model, suggesting that emotion regulation and autonomic regulation share neural networks within the brain. Moreover, the present study extends prior research by highlighting two distinct facets of emotion regulation (impulse control and emotional clarity) that should be of particular interest when investigating the link between emotion regulation, resting vmHRV, and related health outcomes including morbidity and mortality.