Cardio-visual integration modulates the subjective perception of affectively neutral stimuli

Abstract

Interoception, which refers to the perception of internal body signals, has been consistently associated with emotional processing and with the sense of self. However, its influence on the subjective appraisal of affectively neutral and body-unrelated stimuli is still largely unknown. Across two experiments we sought to investigate this issue by asking participants to detect changes in the flashing rhythm of a simple stimulus (a circle) that could either be pulsing synchronously with their own heartbeats or following the pattern of another person's heart. While overall task performance did not vary as a function of cardio-visual synchrony, participants were better at identifying trials in which no change occurred when the flashes were synchronous with their own heartbeats. This study adds to the growing body of research indicating that we use our body as a reference point when perceiving the world; and extends this view by focusing on the role that signals coming from inside the body, such as heartbeats, may play in this referencing process. Specifically we show that private interoceptive sensations can be combined with affectively neutral information unrelated to the self to influence the processing of a multisensory percept. Results are discussed in terms of both standard multisensory integration processes and predictive coding theories.

I can feel my heartbeat: Dancers have increased interoceptive accuracy

“…Given how frequently the heartbeat perception task is used to estimate IAcc in the literature, however, the observation merits further scrutiny in larger samples and with a greater range of intervals. Future studies including dancer and musician groups might also want to include a task to measure participants' time estimation skills, as recommended by Ring and Brener (; such as in Shah et al, ), or use an interoceptive awareness task where the influence of time estimation skills is minimized (such as in Azevedo, Ainley, & Tsakiris, ). Furthermore, a regression analysis exploring the unique contribution of both participants' HR estimation skills and their actual resting HR is a recommended strategy to account for the confound of knowledge about HR influencing participants' HR counts, highlighted by Ring and Brener ().…”

Pleasure junkies all around! Why it matters and why ‘the arts’ might be the answer: a biopsychological perspective

“…Interoceptive accuracy can be measured with objective tests (i.e. tests that are independent of how good or bad the person thinks they are at estimating their interoceptive signals) [97,98]. Attempts at identifying groups of people who might be specifically interoceptively aware have largely proved unsuccessful [96,99,100].…”

Listen to your heart: Examining modality dominance using cross-modal oddball tasks

“…These effects extend to multisensory tasks with individual differences in interoception sensitivity correlating with multisensory integration in the rubber-hand illusion (Suzuki, EXAMINING MODALITY DOMINANCE 40 Garfinkel, Critchley, & Seth, 2013). The rubber-hand illusion was also more pronounced when stimulation was presented during a heart beat (Suzuki et al, 2013) and participants are also more accurate at perceiving auditory and visual multisensory information when stimuli are presented in sync with one's heart rate (Azevedo, Ainley, & Tsakiris, 2016). Given that participants' cardiac responses in the current study quickly differed for standards from oddalls, it is possible that participants with increased interoception sensitivity may also be faster or more receptive to changes in internal and external information.…”