Differential effects of anxiety and depression on interoceptive accuracy

Abstract

Our results highlight the possible relationship between depressive symptoms and interoceptive awareness and may have further implications for theoretical models of anxiety disorders and their treatment. Further research is required to examine the potential consequences of altering interoceptive awareness in healthy subjects in relation to depression and anxiety.

Panic and comorbid depression and their associations with stress reactivity, interoceptive awareness and interoceptive accuracy of various bioparameters

“…Depression seemed to have differential effects on perspiration perception, strongly attenuating IAc in comorbidity with panic, but having even a small incremental effect on IAc of no-panic-controls. With this result we were aligned with recent findings (Pollatos et al, 2009;Dunn et al, 2007Dunn et al, , 2010 about possible interoception-enhancing effects of depression, although we could not show this effect in heart-rate perception (see Fig. 3a).…”

“…Current papers report differential effects. Comorbidity of anxiety and depression seemed to decrease HR-IAc, whereas anxiety alone (and by trend even depression alone) were associated with an increase of IAc (Pollatos et al, 2009;Dunn et al, 2010). Subjects with higher levels of depression had better IAc than those with lower levels (Dunn et al, 2007).…”

“…Additionally, we expect an attenuation of IAc with comorbid depression (Pollatos et al, 2009;Dunn et al, 2010). Since recent studies speculated about possible IAc-enhancing effects of singular depression (Pollatos et al, 2009;Dunn et al, 2007Dunn et al, , 2010, we wanted to test for main effects of depression as well.…”

Association between interoception and empathy: Evidence from heartbeat-evoked brain potential

“…Recent research has suggested that an association exists between a person's sensitivity to their own heartbeat and the intensity of emotion they experience (Herbert et al, 2007;Pollatos et al, 2007b;Wiens et al, 2000). Furthermore, a number of studies have reported that measures of the accuracy of heartbeat perception positively correlate with measures of affective traits, such as tendencies for general anxiety (Pollatos et al, 2007a(Pollatos et al, , 2009Stewart et al, 2001). These empirical studies support the notion that the central monitoring and representation of bodily signals play a fundamental role in emotion.…”

Interoception, Contemplative Practice, and Health

“…Minimally, the increased weighting of interoceptive signal may increase interoceptive accuracy, decreasing the impact of dysfunctional simulations and selfrepresentations on cognitive and behavior, as previously proposed (Farb et al, 2012a). For example, depression is characterized by external locus of control, learned helplessness, and low self-efficacy, and some evidence suggests depressed people have poorer interoceptive accuracy (Ehlers and Breuer, 1992;Pessoa and Ungerleider, 2004;Dunn et al, 2007;Pollatos et al, 2009), whereas mindfulness training appears to bolster self-efficacy (Chang et al, 2004). Furthermore, mindfulness training has been associated with normalization of the gait pattern of depressed individuals, suggesting concurrent changes in proprioceptive and emotional responses (Michalak et al, 2011).…”