Interoception and Positive Symptoms in Schizophrenia

Abstract

The present study focuses on the multifaceted concept of self-disturbance in schizophrenia, adding knowledge about a not yet investigated aspect, which is the interoceptive accuracy. Starting from the assumption that interoceptive accuracy requires an intact sense of self, which otherwise was proved to be altered in schizophrenia, the aim of the present study was to explore interoceptive accuracy in a group of schizophrenia patients, compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, the possible association between interoceptive accuracy and patients’ positive and negative symptomatology was assessed. To pursue these goals, a group of 23 schizophrenia patients and a group of 23 healthy controls performed a heartbeat perception task. Patients’ symptomatology was assessed by means of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Results demonstrated significantly lower interoceptive accuracy in schizophrenia patients compared to healthy controls. This difference was not accounted for participants’ age, BMI, anxiety levels, and heart rate. Furthermore, patients’ illness severity, attention and pharmacological treatment did not influence their interoceptive accuracy levels. Interestingly, a strong positive relation between interoceptive accuracy and positive symptoms severity, especially Grandiosity, was found. The present results demonstrate for the first time that interoceptive accuracy is altered in schizophrenia. Furthermore, they prove a specific association between interoceptive accuracy and positive symptomatology, suggesting that the symptom Grandiosity might be protective against an altered basic sense of self in patients characterized by higher sensibility to their inner bodily sensations.

Pain Mirrors: Neural Correlates of Observing Self or Others’ Facial Expressions of Pain

“…Interoception, the individual sensitivity to physiological stimuli originating inside of the body, is one of the most relevant aspects of self-experience and may influence the perception and evaluation of emotional stimuli ( Pollatos et al, 2007 ; Dunn et al, 2010 ). In the present study, interoceptive accuracy was assessed as described in Ardizzi et al (2016) and Ambrosecchia et al (2017) . Briefly, participants had to silently count their own heartbeats in four different time intervals (25, 35, 45, and 100 s) presented in random order and triggered by audio-visual start and stop cues.…”

The Role of Language in Alexithymia: Moving Towards a Multiroute Model of Alexithymia

“…Furthermore, a number of the conditions that are characterised by an increased prevalence of alexithymia also show abnormalities in interoception. Objective impairments in interoception in clinical groups have been demonstrated using widelyused cardiac measures of interoception, such as the heartbeat tracking and heartbeat discrimination tasks (in anxiety and panic disorder; Ehlers & Breuer, 1992;Paulus & Stein, 2010;Yoris et al, 2015; in alcohol and substance abuse; Naqvi & Bechara, 2010;Paulus & Stewart, 2014;Paulus, Tapert, & Schulteis, 2009;Verdejo-Garcia, Clark, & Dunn, 2012;in depression;Dunn, Dalgleish, Ogilvie, & Lawrence, 2007;Harshaw, 2015;Pollatos, Traut-Mattausch, & Schandry, 2009;in somatoform disorders;Schaefer, Egloff, & Witthöft, 2012;in autism;Garfinkel, Tiley, et al, 2016;Shah et al, 2016;in OCD;Lazarov, Dar, Oded, & Liberman, 2010;Stern, 2014; in eating disorders; Klabunde, Acheson, Boutelle, Matthews, & Kaye, 2013;and in schizophrenia;Ardizzi et al, 2016).…”

Seeing myself through my heart: Cortical processing of a single heartbeat speeds up self-face recognition

“…perceiving a pulsing stimulus in synchrony with one's own heart over someone else's body/face for a short time interval. However, there is growing evidence that even the afferent signals at the level of individual heartbeats can influence perceptual (e.g., (Pramme, Larra, Schachinger, & Frings, 2014, 2016Salomon et al, 2016)), cognitive (e.g., (Fiacconi, Peter, Owais, & Kohler, 2016;Garfinkel et al, 2013;Pfeifer et al, 2017)) and affective processing (e.g., (Azevedo, Badoud, & Tsakiris, 2017;Garfinkel et al, 2014)).…”