Interoceptive Awareness Is Negatively Related to the Exteroceptive Manipulation of Bodily Self-Location

Abstract

The perception of being located within one’s body (i.e., bodily self-location) is an essential feature of everyday self-experience. However, by manipulating exteroceptive input, healthy participants can easily be induced to perceive themselves as being spatially dislocated from their physical bodies. It has previously been suggested that interoception, i.e., the processing of inner physiological signals, contributes to the stability of body representations; however, this relationship has not previously been tested for different dimensions of interoception and bodily self-location. In the present study, using an advanced automatized setup, we systematically manipulated participants’ perspective of their own body (first- vs third-person perspective) as well as the synchrony of visuotactile stimulation (synchronous vs asynchronous). The malleability of bodily self-location was assessed using a questionnaire targeting in-body and out-of-body experiences. Participants also performed a heartbeat discrimination task to assess their interoceptive accuracy (behavioral performance), interoceptive sensibility (confidence in their interoceptive abilities), and interoceptive awareness (meta-cognitive representation of interoceptive signals). Bodily self-location was significantly influenced by perspective, with third-person perspective being associated with stronger out-of-body experiences compared to first-person perspective. Furthermore, there was a significant perspective × stimulation interaction, with subsequent analyses showing that participants reported out-of-body experiences particularly under third-person perspective combined with synchronous visuotactile stimulation. Correlation and regression analyses revealed that meta-cognitive interoceptive awareness was specifically and negatively related to the exteroceptively mediated malleability of body experiences. These results indicate that the perception of the self being located within one’s body relies on the interaction of exteroceptive input and higher-order interoceptive abilities. This has implications for theoretical considerations about the bodily self in health as well as for the understanding of disturbed bodily self-processing in clinical contexts.

Effect of the subjective intensity of fatigue and interoception on perceptual regulation and performance during sustained physical activity

“…This would limit error-mediated updates to prior predictions, thus mitigating effects on perceptual inference that may underpin the perception of effort (Kuppuswamy, 2017;Zénon et al, 2019). The results are in line with findings indicating the importance of interoceptive awareness in shaping perceptual and affective experiences, including symptoms of anxiety (Garfinkel et al, 2016) and susceptibility to exteroceptive manipulation of self-location (Bekrater-Bodmann et al, 2020), in healthy populations. The greater the awareness of body representations, the greater reliability held in interoceptive predictions and the less influence of (interoceptive and exteroceptive) prediction error on driving perception, particularly under conditions where confidence in predictions may be weakened (i.e.…”

Toward the unity of pathological and exertional fatigue: A predictive processing model

“…That is, those who are more aware of the accuracy of their interoceptive judgments may experience smaller, relative reductions in precision beliefs under conditions of fatigue, therefore attenuating the rise in prediction error and the perception of effort. In line with this hypothesis, interoceptive insight has been shown to reduce one's susceptibility to an exteroceptive manipulation of self-location (Bekrater-Bodmann et al, 2020), suggesting that precise higher-order representations of the body are effective at limiting the influence of (exteroceptive) prediction error on belief updates. Evaluation of how conscious insight into interoceptive representations of bodily shapes this relationship may help further define how metacognitive processes influence subjective experiences aroused during acute fatiguing exertion.…”

Disentangling interoceptive abilities in alexithymia

“…The main limitation of this study is inevitably linked to the rapid evolution of the definition of interoception, a complex and multi-faceted construct that is undergoing continuous refinement in conceptualization and operationalization. This issue concerns, in particular, the heartbeat perception task—HBP task—that we applied in the current paper to measure interoceptive accuracy by following the previous literature on alexithymia and interoception (Bekrater-Bodmann et al, 2020 ; Herbert et al, 2011 ; Nicholson et al, 2018 ; Scarpazza et al, , 2015 , 2017 ; Shah et al, 2016 ; Ueno et al, 2020 ). Despite its extensive and current use, this task has recently been questioned in terms of its capacity to effectively capture IAcc (Desmedt et al, 2018 ; Ring et al, 2015 ; Zamariola, et al, 2018 ).…”

“…To allow a coherent comparison with the extant literature (Bekrater-Bodmann et al, 2020 ; Herbert et al, 2011 ; Nicholson et al, 2018 ; Scarpazza et al, 2015 , 2017 ; Shah et al, 2016 ; Ueno et al, 2020 ), we used the heartbeat perception task—HBP task—(Schandry, 1981 ) to estimate Interoceptive Accuracy (IAcc) (Garfinkel & Critchley, 2013 ) (see “Discussion” below for benefits and limitations of this task).…”

“…In keeping with existing research (Bekrater-Bodmann et al, 2020 ; Garfinkel et al, 2015 ; Khalsa et al, 2020 ), at the end of each heartbeat perception task trial, participants were asked to rate how confident they were about their performance at each IAcc trial. This rating was performed using a paper/pencil to mark a Likert Scale ranging from 0 (“Total guess/I believe that my performance on the task was extremely poor”) to 10 (“Complete confidence/ I believe that my performance on the task was very good”).…”