The new measures of interoceptive accuracy: A systematic review and assessment

Interoception in anxiety, depression, and psychosis: a review

Research has examined the relationship between interoception and anxiety, depression, and psychosis; however, it is unclear which aspects of interoception have been systematically examined, what the combined findings are, and which areas require further research. To answer these questions, we systematically searched and narratively synthesised relevant reviews, meta-analyses, and theory papers (total n = 34). Existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses (anxiety n = 2; depression n = 2; psychosis n = 0), focus on cardiac interoceptive accuracy (heartbeat perception), and indicate that heartbeat perception is not systematically impaired in anxiety or depression. Heartbeat perception might be poorer in people with psychosis, but further evidence is needed. Other aspects of interoception, such as different body systems and processing levels, have been studied but not systematically reviewed. We highlight studies examining these alternative bodily domains and levels, review the efficacy of interoception-based psychological interventions, and make suggestions for future research.

Funding

Wellcome Trust UK.

Transdiagnostic failure to adapt interoceptive precision estimates across affective, substance use, and eating disorders: A replication and extension of previous results

Recent Bayesian theories of interoception suggest that perception of bodily states rests upon a precision-weighted integration of afferent signals and prior beliefs. In a previous study, we fit a computational model of perception to behavior on a heartbeat tapping task to test whether aberrant precision-weighting could explain misestimation of cardiac states in psychopathology. We found that, during an interoceptive perturbation designed to amplify afferent signal precision (inspiratory breath-holding), healthy individuals increased the precision-weighting assigned to ascending cardiac signals (relative to resting conditions), while individuals with anxiety, depression, substance use disorders, and/or eating disorders did not. In this pre-registered study, we aimed to replicate and extend our prior findings in a new transdiagnostic patient sample (N=285) similar to the one in the original study. As expected, patients in this new sample were also unable to adjust beliefs about the precision of interoceptive signals - preventing the ability to accurately perceive changes in their cardiac state. Follow-up analyses combining samples from the previous and current study (N=719) also afforded power to identify group differences within narrower diagnostic groups, and to examine predictive accuracy when logistic regression models were trained on one sample and tested on the other. With this confirmatory evidence in place, future studies should examine the utility of interceptive precision measures in predicting treatment outcomes and test whether these computational mechanisms might represent novel therapeutic targets.

The effect of 10-week long yoga training on interoceptive abilities: cross-sectional and longitudinal investigation of cardiac and gastric accuracy

Based on their characteristics, it is likely that mind-body techniques develop interoception, the perception of bodily state. Nevertheless, findings on mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and body scan techniques are inconclusive. Additionally, the methodological scope is not exhaustive, neither in terms of the intervention nor the applied measure of interoception. This study investigated for the first time the effect of regular yoga training on cardiac and gastric perceptual ability (measured with the mental heartbeat tracking task and the water load task, respectively). With the involvement of 90 female university students (yoga group n = 57, control group n = 33) we did not find any connection between baseline heartbeat perception score and gastric fullness. Moreover, the applied 10-week-long regular yoga training did not develop any of the measured interoceptive abilities. We conclude that yoga might develop other abilities than these specific sensations. Very probably, the measured cardiac and gastric perceptual abilities do not represent bodily sensations in general. It would be worth to investigate, however, the effect of longer yoga training on interoception.