Exploring three levels of interoception in people with functional motor disorders.

Abstract Introduction A three-level model of interoception has recently been defined. We aim to study the interoceptive processing in individuals with functional motor disorder (FMD). Methods Twenty-two patients with FMD were compared to 23 healthy controls. They underwent a protocol measuring different levels of interoception including: accuracy (an heart-beat tracking task), awareness (participant’s confidence level) and sensibility (the Body Awareness Questionnaire-BAQ). Depression, anxiety and alexithymia were assessed by means of validated clinical scales. Results The FMD group showed a lower cardiac interoceptive accuracy and sensibility than healthy controls but they did not differ in terms of awareness (p=0.03 and 0.005 respectively). They were aware of their poor performance in the accuracy task. Cardiac interoceptive accuracy positively correlated with the BAQ sub-scales “Predict Body Reaction” (r=0.49, p=0.001) and “Sleep-Wake Cycle” (r=0.52, p