The inside of me: interoceptive constraints on the concept of self in neuroscience and clinical psychology

Social cognition in two brothers with Becker muscular dystrophy: an exploratory study revealing divergent behavioral phenotypes

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Only few studies investigated social cognition in Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD). However, brain dystrophin deficiency could be a neural substrate for cognitive, emotional, and neuropsychological features in BMD.

METHODS

We compared interoceptive accuracy and interpersonal comfort distance in two brothers with BMD presenting with the same genetic deletion and a healthy control. When possible, we collected neuropsychological and psychopathological assessments.

RESULTS

Our BMD patients were significantly different in interoceptive accuracy, with patient 1 being extremely accurate and patient 2 being significantly less accurate than his brother but more accurate than the control. Interestingly, they presented opposite patterns of interpersonal distance. Patient 1 was comfortable with very short interpersonal distance (≤50 cm from the confederate/object) vs the control and patient 2. By contrast, patient 2 preferred larger distance vs the control and patient 1. Patient 1 also presented difficulties in social and emotional skills on the psychopathological assessment.

CONCLUSIONS

We are aware this is a small sample; nonetheless, this is also the first description of such aspects in BMD and the first report ever of such divergent behavioral pattern. As impaired social cognition affects the quality of life and social relationship, further studies are needed for a closer understanding of involved mechanisms.

Embodiment of underweight and normal-weight avatars affects bodily self-representations in anorexia nervosa

Body image distortion (BID) is a crucial aspect of anorexia nervosa (AN), leading to body overestimation, dissatisfaction, and low self-esteem. BID significantly influences the onset, maintenance, and relapse of the pathology. We assessed whether a Full Body Illusion (FBI) using under and normal-weight avatars' bodies affects perceptual body image and body schema estimations in both individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) and healthy controls (HC). After each embodiment procedure, we asked participants to estimate the width of their hips (Perceptual Body Image Task) and the minimum aperture width of a virtual door necessary to pass through it (Body Schema Task). Additionally, we asked participants to rate the avatars in terms of self-similarity, attractiveness, and implicit disgust (i.e., pleasant/unpleasant body odour). Whereas participants with AN (N = 26) showed changes in body schema estimations after embodying the normal-weight avatar, no changes were found in HC (N = 25), highlighting increased bodily self-plasticity in AN. Notably, individuals with AN rated the normal weight avatar as the most similar to their real body, which was also considered the least attractive and the most repulsive. These ratings correlated with BID severity. Furthermore, at the explicit level, all participants reported feeling thinner than usual after embodying the underweight avatar. Overall, our findings suggest that BID in AN engages multiple sensory channels (from visual to olfactory) and components (from perceptual to affective), offering potential targets for innovative non-invasive treatments aimed at modifying flexible aspects of body representation.

The Cerebellum as an Embodying Machine

Whereas emotion theorists often keep their distance from the embodied approach, theorists of embodiment tend to treat emotion as a mainly physiologic process. However, intimate links between emotions and the body suggest that emotions are privileged phenomena to attempt to reintegrate mind and body and that the body helps the mind in shaping emotional responses. To date, research has favored the cerebrum over other parts of the brain as a substrate of embodied emotions. However, given the widely demonstrated contribution of the cerebellum to emotional processing, research in affective neuroscience should consider embodiment theory as a useful approach for evaluating the cerebellar role in emotion and affect. The aim of this review is to insert the cerebellum among the structures needed to embody emotions, providing illustrative examples of cerebellar involvement in embodied emotions (as occurring in empathic abilities) and in impaired identification and expression of embodied emotions (as occurring in alexithymia).

Examining the association between depersonalisation traits and the bodily self in waking and dreaming

Depersonalisation (DP) is characterized by fundamental alterations to the sense of self that include feelings of detachment and estrangement from one's body. We conducted an online study in healthy participants (n = 514) with DP traits to investigate and quantify the subjective experience of body and self during waking and dreaming, as the vast majority of previous studies focussed on waking experience only. Investigating dreams in people experiencing DP symptoms may help us understand whether the dream state is a 'spared space' where people can temporarily 'retrieve' their sense of self and sense of bodily presence. We found that higher DP traits-i.e. higher scores on the Cambridge Depersonalisation Scale (CDS)-were associated with more frequent dream experiences from an outside observer perspective (r = 0.28) and more frequent dream experiences of distinct bodily sensations (r = 0.23). We also found that people with higher CDS scores had more frequent dream experiences of altered bodily perception (r = 0.24), more frequent nightmares (r = 0.33) and higher dream recall (r = 0.17). CDS scores were negatively correlated with body boundary scores (r = - 0.31) in waking states and there was a negative association between CDS scores and the degree of trust in interoceptive signals (r = - 0.52). Our study elucidates the complex phenomenology of DP in relation to bodily selfhood during waking and dreaming and suggests avenues for potential therapeutic interventions in people with chronic depersonalisation (depersonalisation -derealisation disorder).

Visual perspective and body ownership modulate vicarious pain and touch: A systematic review

We conducted a systematic review investigating the influence of visual perspective and body ownership (BO) on vicarious brain resonance and vicarious sensations during the observation of pain and touch. Indeed, the way in which brain reactivity and the phenomenological experience can be modulated by blurring the bodily boundaries of self-other distinction is still unclear. We screened Scopus and WebOfScience, and identified 31 articles, published from 2000 to 2022. Results show that assuming an egocentric perspective enhances vicarious resonance and vicarious sensations. Studies on synaesthetes suggest that vicarious conscious experiences are associated with an increased tendency to embody fake body parts, even in the absence of congruent multisensory stimulation. Moreover, immersive virtual reality studies show that the type of embodied virtual body can affect high-order sensations such as appropriateness, unpleasantness, and erogeneity, associated with the touched body part and the toucher's social identity. We conclude that perspective plays a key role in the resonance with others' pain and touch, and full-BO over virtual avatars allows investigation of complex aspects of pain and touch perception which would not be possible in reality.

The cognitive neuroscience of self-awareness: Current framework, clinical implications, and future research directions

Self-awareness, the ability to take oneself as the object of awareness, has been an enigma for our species, with different answers to this question being provided by religion, philosophy, and, more recently, science. The current review aims to discuss the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying self-awareness. The multidimensional nature of self-awareness will be explored, suggesting how it can be thought of as an emergent property observed in different cognitive complexity levels, within a predictive coding approach. A presentation of alterations of self-awareness in neuropsychiatric conditions will ground a discussion on alternative frameworks to understand this phenomenon, in health and psychopathology, with future research directions being indicated to fill current gaps in the literature. This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Consciousness Psychology > Brain Function and Dysfunction Neuroscience > Cognition.

Time evaluation and its accuracy in eating disorders: differences in relation to interoceptive awareness

PURPOSE

Time evaluation has been poorly studied in eating disorder (ED) patients despite its relationship with body awareness, which is a core psychopathological feature in EDs and is influenced by impulsivity, interoception, and working memory. This study aims to evaluate time estimation and its accuracy across the ED spectrum in connection with specific and general psychopathology.

METHODS

A group of 215 women was enrolled in a computerized task involving the estimation of 1-min intervals. Impulsivity and body awareness constructs (self-monitoring, depersonalization, interoceptive deficit) were evaluated and examined for significant correlations with time estimation and the accuracy of the measure.

RESULTS

Patients with EDs showed an impaired ability to estimate time, with an accuracy that positively correlated with compulsive self-monitoring (p = 0.03). Differences between diagnostic subgroups showed an overestimation of time in anorexia nervosa patients and an underestimation of time in binge eating disorder patients, whose time estimation was also less accurate.

CONCLUSION

The relationship between time estimation and compulsive self- monitoring might corroborate the presence of an imbalanced integration of information in patients with EDs that was not present in the community women included in the study. Time perception should be further evaluated in the ED field, and longitudinal changes due to psychopathological recovery or BMI changes should be examined.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE

Level III: Evidence obtained from a well-designed cohort or case-control analytic study.

Gut markers of bodily self-consciousness in men

Bodily self-consciousness, the state of mind that allows humans to be aware of their own body, forms the backdrop for almost every human experience, yet its underpinnings remain elusive. Here we combine an ingestible, minimally invasive capsule with surface electrogastrography to probe if gut physiology correlates with bodily self-consciousness in a sample of healthy men during a virtual bodily illusion. We discover that specific patterns of stomach and bowel activity (temperature, pressure, and pH) covary with specific facets of bodily self-consciousness (feelings of body location, agency, and disembodiment). These results uncover the hitherto untapped potential of minimally invasive probes to study the link between mental and gut states and show the significance of deep visceral organs in the self-conscious perception of ourselves as embodied beings.

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We studied the gastrointestinal (GI) underpinnings of bodily self-consciousness

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An ingestible pill tracked how GI parameters change during a bodily illusion

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GI activity was generally correlated with higher embodiment and lower disembodiment

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Gut plays a significant role in how our self embodies entities such as avatars

Abstract concepts: external influences, internal constraints, and methodological issues

There is a longstanding and widely held misconception about the relative remoteness of abstract concepts from concrete experiences. This review examines the current evidence for external influences and internal constraints on the processing, representation, and use of abstract concepts, like truth, friendship, and number. We highlight the theoretical benefit of distinguishing between grounded and embodied cognition and then ask which roles do perception, action, language, and social interaction play in acquiring, representing and using abstract concepts. By reviewing several studies, we show that they are, against the accepted definition, not detached from perception and action. Focussing on magnitude-related concepts, we also discuss evidence for cultural influences on abstract knowledge and explore how internal processes such as inner speech, metacognition, and inner bodily signals (interoception) influence the acquisition and retrieval of abstract knowledge. Finally, we discuss some methodological developments. Specifically, we focus on the importance of studies that investigate the time course of conceptual processing and we argue that, because of the paramount role of sociality for abstract concepts, new methods are necessary to study concepts in interactive situations. We conclude that bodily, linguistic, and social constraints provide important theoretical limitations for our theories of conceptual knowledge.

Concrete constraints on abstract concepts-editorial

This special issue, "Concrete constraints of abstract concepts", addresses the role of concrete determinants, both external and internal to the human body, in acquisition, processing and use of abstract concepts while at the same time presenting to the readers an overview of methods used to assess their representation.