Cortical processing of breathing perceptions in the athletic brain
2
Citation
69
Reference
10
Related Paper
Citation Trend
Abstract:
Abstract Athletes regularly endure large increases in ventilation, and accompanying perceptions of breathlessness. While breathing perceptions often correlate poorly with objective measures of lung function in both health and clinical populations, we have previously demonstrated closer matching between subjective breathlessness and changes in ventilation in endurance athletes, suggesting that athletes may be more accurate during respiratory interoception. To better understand the link between exercise and breathlessness, we sought to identify the mechanisms by which the brain processing of respiratory perception might be optimised in athletes. Twenty endurance athletes and 20 sedentary controls underwent 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging. Inspiratory resistive loading induced conscious breathing perceptions (breathlessness), and a delay-conditioning paradigm was employed to evoke preceding periods of anticipation. Athletes demonstrated anticipatory brain activity that positively correlated with resulting breathing perceptions within key interoceptive areas, such as the thalamus, insula and primary sensorimotor cortices, which was negatively correlated in sedentary controls. Athletes also exhibited greater connectivity between interoceptive attention networks and primary sensorimotor cortex. These functional differences in athletic brains suggest that exercise may optimise processing of respiratory sensations. Future work may probe whether these brain mechanisms are harnessed when exercise is employed to treat breathlessness within chronic respiratory disease.Keywords:
Interoception
Anticipation (artificial intelligence)
Abstract Interoception plays an important role in emotion processing, but the relationship between the physiological responses associated with emotional experience and interoception is unclear. In this study, we measured interoceptive sensitivity using the heartbeat discrimination task and investigated the effects of individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity on changes in heart rate and insula activity in response to music-induced emotions. We found that the heart rate increased when listening to the music pieces rated as emotionally high-touching in the high interoceptive sensitivity group only. Compared to the emotionally low-touching music, listening to the emotionally high-touching music was associated with higher insula activity. Furthermore, relative to individuals with low interoceptive sensitivity, the region of interest analysis of the insula subregions for individuals with high interoceptive sensitivity revealed significant activity in the bilateral dorsal granular insula, the right ventral dysgranular insula, and the right granular and dorsal dysgranular insula while listening to the high-touching music pieces. Our results suggest that individuals with high interoceptive sensitivity use their physical condition to assess their emotional level when listening to music. Furthermore, the insula activity may reflect the use of interoception to estimate emotions.
Interoception
Heart beat
Cite
Citations (1)
The body sends interoceptive visceral information through deep brain structures to the cerebral cortex. The insula cortex, organized in hierarchical modules, is the major cortical region receiving interoceptive afferents and contains visceral topographic maps. Yet, the biological significance of the insula's modular architecture in relation to deep brain regions remains unsolved. In this opinion, we propose the Insula Hierarchical Modular Adaptive Interoception Control (IMAC) model to suggest that insula modules (granular, dysgranular and agranular subregions), forming networks with prefrontal (supplementary motor area, dorsolateral and ventromedial cortices) and striatum (posterior, dorsomedial and ventromedial) subregions, are specialized for higher-order interoceptive representations, recruited in a context-dependent manner to support habitual, model-based and exploratory adaptive behavior. We then discuss how insula interoceptive representations, or metaceptions, could give rise to conscious interoceptive feelings built up from low-order visceral representations and associated basic emotions located in deep interoceptive brain structures.
Interoception
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
Insular cortex
Supplementary motor area
Cite
Citations (3)
Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a devastating psychiatric illness that is associated with significant morbidity and mortality.Aberrant visceral interoceptive processing within the insula has been hypothesized to be an important mechanism in AN's pathophysiology due to the theoretical link between interoception and emotional experience.We therefore utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine whether altered insula functioning underlies visceral interoception in AN.Fifteen females with restricting-type AN and 15 healthy control females underwent fMRI while performing an interoceptive attention task during which they focused on sensations in their heart, stomach, and bladder.Participants also performed an anxious rumination task while in the scanner.AN participants were weight-restored and free of psychotropic medications.Two distinct regions of the insula-anterior insula and dorsal mid-insula-exhibited a significant (po0.05)interaction between group and interoceptive modality.The post hoc analyses revealed that in the dorsal mid-insula the interaction was driven by group differences during stomach interoception (p = 0.002, Bonferroni corrected), whereas in the anterior insula the interaction was driven by group differences during heart interoception (p = 0.03, Bonferroni corrected).In addition, individuals with AN displayed increased activation during anxious rumination in the dorsal mid-insula, and activation in this region during stomach interoception was correlated with measures of anxiety and psychopathology.This relationship between altered visceral interoception and clinical symptoms in AN suggests an important mechanism for the disorder.Additional research is needed to examine whether interventions targeting visceral interoception may increase the efficacy of treatments for AN.
Interoception
Anorexia nervosa
Cite
Citations (0)
As symbolically represented by the rubber hand illusion, the sense of body-ownership is constructed by the integration of multisensory signals. Due to its strategic location as an interface between the brain and body, the insula, as well as the temporal-parietal junction and premotor area, have been thought to play an important role in multisensory integration. The insula, especially its most anterior portion, is also a site for representation and awareness of interoception: sensing the internal physiological states of the body. Recent studies have showed that interoception can be integrated with exteroception, such as vision and touch, and can thus contribute to the sense of body-ownership. Here, recent empirical findings and a hypothetical model about functions of the insula for the sense of body-ownership are introduced. Furthermore, I will try to expand the model to explain the significance of interoception in decision-making.
Interoception
Multisensory Integration
Psychology of self
Cite
Citations (2)
The insula has long been among the least understood regions of the human brain, in part due to its restricted accessibility. Mounting evidence suggests that the insula is a prominent player in gustatory, interoceptive, and emotional processing, and likely integrates these different functions to contribute to the homeostatic control of food intake. Here we report the case of a young adult patient who lost the subjective experience of hunger following an ischemic stroke localized in the posterior left insula. The loss of hunger was not attributable to medication, substance use, or a clinical disorder, and lasted for a period of 15 months. In line with the role attributed to the insula in gustation and interoception, we suggest that the insula integrates information about taste, interoception, and the hedonic value of food in the service of homeostatic regulation.
Interoception
Insular cortex
Cite
Citations (3)
Interoception
Cite
Citations (0)
Interoception
Heart beat
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
Cite
Citations (24)
Relatively discrete experimental literatures have grown to support the insula's role in the domains of interoception, focal exteroceptive attention and cognitive control, and the experience of anxiety, even as theoretical accounts have asserted that the insula is a critical zone for integrating across these domains. Here we provide the first experimental demonstration that there exists a functional topography across the insula, with distinct regions in the same participants responding in a highly selective fashion for interoceptive, exteroceptive, and affective processing. Although each insular region is associated with areas of differential resting state functional connectivity relative to the other regions, overall their functional connectivity profiles are quite similar, thereby providing a map of how interoceptive, exteroceptive, and emotional awareness are integrated within the insular cortex. Hum Brain Mapp 34:2944–2958, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Interoception
Insular cortex
Cite
Citations (365)
Interoception, the processing of internal bodily signals, is proposed as the fundamental mechanism underlying emotional experiences. Interoceptive and emotional processing appear distorted in psychiatric disorders. However, our understanding of the neural structures involved in both processes remains limited. To explore the feasibility of enhancing interoception and emotion, we conducted two studies using high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) applied to the right anterior insula. In study one, we compared the effects of anodal HD-tDCS and sham tDCS on interoceptive abilities (sensibility, confidence, accuracy, emotional evaluation) in 52 healthy subjects. Study two additionally included physical activation through ergometer cycling at the beginning of HD-tDCS and examined changes in interoceptive and emotional processing in 39 healthy adults. In both studies, HD-tDCS was applied in a single-blind cross-over online design with two separate sessions. Study one yielded no significant effects of HD-tDCS on interoceptive dimensions. In study two, significant improvements in interoceptive sensibility and confidence were observed over time with physical preactivation, while no differential effects were found between sham and insula stimulation. The expected enhancement of interoceptive and emotional processing following insula stimulation was not observed. We conclude that HD-tDCS targeting the insula does not consistently increase interoceptive or emotional variables. The observed increase in interoceptive sensibility may be attributed to the activation of the interoceptive network through physical activity or training effects. Future research on HD-tDCS involving interoceptive network structures could benefit from protocols targeting larger regions within the network, rather than focusing solely on insula stimulation.
Interoception
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
Cite
Citations (1)
The insula serves as the primary gustatory and viscerosensory region in the mammalian cortex. It receives visceral and gustatory afferent projections through dedicated brainstem and thalamic nuclei, which suggests a potential role as a site for homeostatic integration. For example, while human neuroimaging studies of gustation have implicated the dorsal mid-insular cortex as one of the primary gustatory regions in the insula, other recent studies have implicated this same region of the insula in interoception. This apparent convergence of gustatory and interoceptive information could reflect a common neural representation in the insula shared by both interoception and gustation. This idea finds support in translational studies in rodents, and may constitute a medium for integrating homeostatic information with feeding behavior. To assess this possibility, healthy volunteers were asked to undergo fMRI while performing tasks involving interoceptive attention to visceral sensations as well as a gustatory mapping task. Analysis of the unsmoothed, high-resolution fMRI data confirmed shared representations of gustatory and visceral interoception within the dorsal mid-insula. Group conjunction analysis revealed overlapping patterns of activation for both tasks in the dorsal mid-insula, and region-of-interest analyses confirmed that the dorsal mid-insula regions responsive for visceral interoception also exhibit strong responses to tastants.
Interoception
Insular cortex
Cite
Citations (91)