Interoception across Modalities: On the Relationship between Cardiac Awareness and the Sensitivity for Gastric Functions

作者：Beate M. Herbert, Eric R. Muth, Olga Pollatos, Cornelia Herbert · 发表于：PLoS ONE · 年份：2012 · DOI：10.1371/journal.pone.0036646 · 被引用次数：290 · 研究领域：Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments、Infant Health and Development、Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes

The individual sensitivity for ones internal bodily signals ("interoceptive awareness") has been shown to be of relevance for a broad range of cognitive and affective functions. Interoceptive awareness has been primarily assessed via measuring the sensitivity for ones cardiac signals ("cardiac awareness") which can be non-invasively measured by heartbeat perception tasks. It is an open question whether cardiac awareness is related to the sensitivity for other bodily, visceral functions. This study investigated the relationship between cardiac awareness and the sensitivity for gastric functions in healthy female persons by using non-invasive methods. Heartbeat perception as a measure for cardiac awareness was assessed by a heartbeat tracking task and gastric sensitivity was assessed by a water load test. Gastric myoelectrical activity was measured by electrogastrography (EGG) and subjective feelings of fullness, valence, arousal and nausea were assessed. The results show that cardiac awareness was inversely correlated with ingested water volume and with normogastric activity after water load. However, persons with good and poor cardiac awareness did not differ in their subjective ratings of fullness, nausea and affective feelings after drinking. This suggests that good heartbeat perceivers ingested less water because they subjectively felt more intense signals of fullness during this lower amount of water intake compared to poor heartbeat perceivers who ingested more water unt...