The relationship between interoception and agency and its modulation by heartbeats: an exploratory study

Interoception, the sense of the internal physiological state of the body, theoretically underpins aspects of self-representation. Experimental studies link feelings of body ownership to interoceptive perception, yet few studies have tested for association between the sense of agency and interoceptiv...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2022-08, Vol.12 (1), p.13624-10, Article 13624
Main Authors: Koreki, Akihiro, Goeta, Diana, Ricciardi, Lucia, Eilon, Talia, Chen, Jiaying, Critchley, Hugo D., Garfinkel, Sarah N., Edwards, Mark, Yogarajah, Mahinda
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/378
692/617
Accuracy
Awareness - physiology
Discrimination
Emotions - physiology
Heart
Heart rate
Heart Rate - physiology
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Interoception - physiology
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Systole
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Summary:Interoception, the sense of the internal physiological state of the body, theoretically underpins aspects of self-representation. Experimental studies link feelings of body ownership to interoceptive perception, yet few studies have tested for association between the sense of agency and interoceptive processing. Here, we combined an intentional binding paradigm with cardiac measures of interoceptive processing (behavioural performance on a heartbeat discrimination task, and effects of timing within the cardiac cycle) in twenty-six non-clinical participants as an exploratory study. We found performance accuracy on the heartbeat discrimination task correlated positively with the intentional binding effect, an index of sense of agency (β = 0.832, p = 0.005), even after controlling for effects of age, sex, educational level, heart rate, heart rate variability and time accuracy. The intentional binding effect was enhanced during cardiac systole (compared to diastole) in individuals with greater heartbeat discrimination accuracy (β = 0.640, p = 0.047). These findings support the proposal that interoception contributes to mechanisms underlying the emergence of sense of agency.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-16569-6