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Lernia DDI, Serino S, Tuena C, Cacciatore C, Polli N, Riva G. Mental health meets computational neuroscience: A predictive Bayesian account of the relationship between interoception and multisensory bodily illusions in anorexia nervosa. Int J Clin Health Psychol 2023; 23:100383. [PMID: 36937547 PMCID: PMC10017360 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijchp.2023.100383] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2022] [Accepted: 02/21/2023] [Indexed: 03/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Mental health disorders pose a significant challenge to society. The Bayesian perspective on the mind offers unique insights and tools that may help address a variety of mental health conditions. Psychopathological dysfunctions are often connected to altered predictive and active inference processes, in which cognitive and physiological pathogenic beliefs shape the clinical condition and its symptoms. However, there is a lack of general empirical models that integrate cognitive beliefs, physiological experience, and symptoms in healthy and clinical populations. In this study, we examined the relationship between altered predictive mechanisms, interoception, and pathological bodily distortions in healty individuals and in individuals suffering from anorexia nervosa (AN). AN patients (N=15) completed a Virtual Reality Full-Body Illusion along with interoceptive tasks twice: at hospital admission during an acute symptomatological phase (Time 1) and after a 12-week outpatient clinical weight-restoring rehabilitative program (Time 2). Results were compared to a healthy control group. Our findings indicated that higher levels of interoceptive metacognitive awareness were associated with a greater embodiment. However, unlike in healthy participants, AN patients' interoceptive metacognition was linked to embodiment even in multisensory mismatching (asynchronous) conditions. In addition, unlike in healthy participants, higher interoceptive metacognition in AN patients was related to prior abnormal bodily distortions during the acute symptomatology phase. Prediction errors in bodily estimates predicted posterior bodily estimate distortions after the illusion, but while this relationship was only significant in the synchronous condition in healthy participants, there was no significant difference between synchronous and asynchronous conditions in AN patients. Despite the success of the rehabilitation program in restoring some dysfunctional patterns in the AN group, prediction errors and posterior estimate distortions were present at hospital discharge. Our findings suggest that individuals with AN prioritize interoceptive metacognitive processes (i.e., confidence in their own perceived sensations rather than their actual perceptions), disregarding bottom-up bodily inputs in favour of their prior altered top-down beliefs. Moreover, even if the rehabilitative program partially mitigated these alterations, the pathological condition impaired the patients' ability to coherently update their prior erroneous expectations with real-time multisensory bottom-up bodily information, possibly locking the patients in the experience of a distorted prior top-down belief. These results suggest new therapeutic perspectives and introduce the framework of regenerative virtual therapy (RVT), which aims at utilizing technology-based somatic modification techniques to restructure the maladaptive priors underlying a pathological condition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniele DI Lernia
- Humane Technology Lab, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy
| | - Silvia Serino
- Humane Technology Lab, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy
| | - Cosimo Tuena
- Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy
| | - Chiara Cacciatore
- UO di Endocrinologia e Malattie Metaboliche, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy
| | - Nicoletta Polli
- UO di Endocrinologia e Malattie Metaboliche, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy
- Dipartimento di Scienze Cliniche e di Comunità, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy
| | - Giuseppe Riva
- Humane Technology Lab, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy
- Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy
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Pyasik M, Ciorli T, Pia L. Full body illusion and cognition: A systematic review of the literature. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2022; 143:104926. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104926] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2022] [Revised: 10/20/2022] [Accepted: 10/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
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Tosi G, Maravita A, Romano D. I am the metre: The representation of one's body size affects the perception of tactile distances on the body. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2021; 75:583-597. [PMID: 34427459 DOI: 10.1177/17470218211044488] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Humans must ground the perception of one's body in a mental representation to move in space and interact with objects. This representation can be temporarily altered artificially. In the full-body illusion (FBI), participants see a virtual (or filmed) body receiving a tactile stimulation. When participants receive touches on their body similarly to the seen one (i.e., homologous location and synchronous timing), they embody the seen alien body. While the subjective embodiment of alien bodies of different sizes has been already manipulated with the FBI, it remains unexplored whether the body-metric perception is impacted too. We first developed a new setup for the FBI using 360° videos to favour the embodiment. The FBI was induced for bodies of three sizes adopting anatomical and non-anatomical viewpoints, and we measured the subjective embodiment. The results suggest that humans can embody normal size or bigger bodies seen from anatomical viewpoints, but not smaller ones. We then investigated if the FBI modulates the body-metric representation. We found that the resized bodies' vision affects the perception of one's body-metric representation, but this was independent of the embodiment, suggesting that the FBI alters the body representation at different levels with a specific impact.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giorgia Tosi
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano - Bicocca, Milan, Italy.,Department of History, Society and Human Studies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
| | - Angelo Maravita
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano - Bicocca, Milan, Italy.,Milan Center for Neuroscience (NeuroMI), Milano, Italy
| | - Daniele Romano
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano - Bicocca, Milan, Italy.,Department of History, Society and Human Studies, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy.,Milan Center for Neuroscience (NeuroMI), Milano, Italy
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Tambone R, Poggio G, Pyasik M, Burin D, Dal Monte O, Schintu S, Ciorli T, Lucà L, Semino MV, Doricchi F, Pia L. Changing your body changes your eating attitudes: embodiment of a slim virtual avatar induces avoidance of high-calorie food. Heliyon 2021; 7:e07515. [PMID: 34345726 PMCID: PMC8319483 DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07515] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/04/2021] [Revised: 05/18/2021] [Accepted: 07/05/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The virtual-reality full-body illusion paradigm has been suggested to not only trigger the illusory ownership of the avatar's body but also the attitudinal and behavioral components stereotypically associated to that kind of virtual body. In the present study, we investigated whether this was true for stereotypes related to body size: body satisfaction and eating control behavior. Healthy participants underwent the full-body illusion paradigm with an avatar having either a larger or a slimmer body than their own, and were assessed for implicit attitudes towards body image and food calorie content at baseline and after each full-body illusion session. Results showed that the illusion emerged regardless of the avatar's body size, whereas the perceived dimension of the own body size changed according to the avatar's body size (i.e., participants felt to be slimmer after embodying their slim avatar and larger after embodying their large avatar). Crucially, we found that implicit attitudes towards food, but not those towards one's own body, were modulated by the size of the virtual body. Compared to baseline, ownership of a slimmer avatar increased the avoidance of high-calorie food, whereas ownership of a larger avatar did not induce changes. Our findings suggest that the illusory feeling of being slimmer drives also the food-related stereotypes associated with that body size, increasing the regulation of eating behaviors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Riccardo Tambone
- SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
| | - Giulia Poggio
- SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
| | - Maria Pyasik
- SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.,NPSY-Lab. VR, Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, Verona, Italy
| | - Dalila Burin
- Smart-Aging Research Center, Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer (IDAC), Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
| | - Olga Dal Monte
- Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.,Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Selene Schintu
- Department of Psychology, George Washington University, Washington DC, DC, USA
| | - Tommaso Ciorli
- SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
| | - Laura Lucà
- SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
| | - Maria Vittoria Semino
- SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
| | - Fabrizio Doricchi
- Department of Psychology, University of Rome "La Sapienza", Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Rome, Italy
| | - Lorenzo Pia
- SAMBA (SpAtial, Motor and Bodily Awareness) Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.,NIT (Neuroscience Institute of Turin), Turin, Italy
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Parsons TD, Gaggioli A, Riva G. Extended Reality for the Clinical, Affective, and Social Neurosciences. Brain Sci 2020; 10:E922. [PMID: 33265932 PMCID: PMC7761460 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci10120922] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2020] [Revised: 11/21/2020] [Accepted: 11/26/2020] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Brain science research often involves the use of low-dimensional tools and stimuli that lack several of the potentially valuable features of everyday activities and interactions. Although this research has provided important information about cognitive, affective, and social processes for both clinical and nonclinical populations, there is growing interest in high-dimensional simulations that extend reality. These high-dimensional simulations involve dynamic stimuli presented serially or concurrently to permit the assessment and training of perceivers' integrative processes over time. Moreover, high-dimensional simulation platforms can contextually restrain interpretations of cues about a target's internal states. Extended reality environments extend assessment and training platforms that balance experimental control with emotionally engaging background narratives aimed at extending the affective experience and social interactions. Herein, we highlight the promise of extended reality platforms for greater ecological validity in the clinical, affective, and social neurosciences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas D. Parsons
- iCenter for Affective Neurotechnologies (iCAN), Denton, TX 76203, USA
- Computational Neuropsychology and Simulation (CNS) Laboratory, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203, USA
- College of Information, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76203, USA
| | - Andrea Gaggioli
- Humane Technology Lab, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 20123 Milan, Italy; (A.G.); (G.R.)
- Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Laboratory, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, 20145 Milan, Italy
| | - Giuseppe Riva
- Humane Technology Lab, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 20123 Milan, Italy; (A.G.); (G.R.)
- Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Laboratory, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, 20145 Milan, Italy
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