NEURAL AND COGNITIVE PREDICTORS OF INTEROCEPTIVE BEHAVIOR

Date of approval of the thesis project: August 24, 2016.

Date of submission of the report:

Juan Pablo Morales Seplveda Eugenio Rodrguez Balboa.

Student Thesis director
 Introduction
Interoception is the ability to sense and perceive consciously the body internal signals (Arthur D
Craig, 2002; Critchley, Wiens, Rotshtein, hman, & Dolan, 2004). It has been reported three
main interoceptive indices, these are: interoceptive accuracy, interoceptive learning and
interoceptive awareness. This behavioral indices present high variability in the population
(Canales-Johnson et al., 2015). However, the factors that explain the interoceptive behavior in
its different indices have not been studied in an integrative model. The aim of this project is to
build a statistical model in order to determine the factors that explains the interoceptive behavior
in their three indices. There are two factors that emerge as possible interoceptive predictors.
These are, cognitive factors (attention, executive function and fluid intelligence), and
neurophysiological factors (Heart Evoked Potential (HEP) and alpha band).
Interoceptive tasks depend on attentional functions, since there is evidence that both
interoception and attention might be related in a behavioral level (Matthias, Schandry, Duschek,
& Pollatos, 2009) and also by heartbeat evoked potential (Montoya, Schandry, & Mller, 1993).
However, it is unknown whether attention can explain the interoceptive variability, for this reason
this project aims to find out whether attentional skills can predict interoceptive performance.
Neurophysiology is the third factor that possibly explains the interoceptive variability, the
amplitude modulation in the HEP (Canales-Johnson et al., 2015). Interoceptive variability could
be temporally determined by electroencephalographic analysis.
Integrating these three factors in a statistical model, it could be possible explain the interoceptive
variability.
The relevance of this study lies in the growing interest to link interoception and its neural
correlate with clinical disorders that present socio-cognitive functions altered, like for example
anxiety(Mallorqu-Bagu et al., 2014), panic disorder (Ehlers, 1993) and mood disorders (Paulus
& Stein, 2010). Finally, a research with methodological nature like this, plays a key role in
orienting future investigations and generating new questions. The theoretical evidence that
annexed material are presented here in order to better understand the research proposal.
During the last years, it has been reported an interaction between interoception and social
cognition, namely empathy, ToM and emotion recognition (A D Craig, 2008; Dunn et al., 2010;
Ernst, Northoff, Bker, Seifritz, & Grimm, 2013; Fukushima, Terasawa, & Umeda, 2011;
Garfinkel & Critchley, 2013; Grynberg & Pollatos, 2015; Sel, 2014; Wiens, 2005; Zaki, Davis,
& Ochsner, 2012). Due to this link, it is thought that these two elements are predictors of the
variability in the interoceptive behavior.