@article{HerbertPollatos2012, author = {Herbert, Beate M. and Pollatos, Olga}, title = {The body in the mind On the relationship between interoception and embodiment}, series = {Topics in cognitive science}, volume = {4}, journal = {Topics in cognitive science}, number = {4}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {1756-8757}, doi = {10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01189.x}, pages = {692 -- 704}, year = {2012}, abstract = {The processing, representation, and perception of bodily signals (interoception) plays an important role for human behavior. Theories of embodied cognition hold that higher cognitive processes operate on perceptual symbols and that concept use involves reactivations of the sensory-motor states that occur during experience with the world. Similarly, activation of interoceptive representations and meta-representations of bodily signals supporting interoceptive awareness are profoundly associated with emotional experience and cognitive functions. This article gives an overview over present findings and models on interoception and mechanisms of embodiment and highlights its relevance for disorders that are suggested to represent a translation deficit of bodily states into subjective feelings and self-awareness.}, language = {en} } @article{AlbrechtAnzingerKopietzetal.2008, author = {Albrecht, Jessica and Anzinger, Andrea and Kopietz, Rainer and Sch{\"o}pf, Veronika and Kleemann, Anna Maria and Pollatos, Olga and Wiesmann, Martin}, title = {Test-retest reliability of the olfactory detection threshold test of the Sniffin' Sticks}, issn = {0379-864X}, year = {2008}, abstract = {The aim of the present study was to investigate the test-retest reliability of the olfactory detection threshold subtest of the Sniffin" Sticks test battery, if administered repeatedly on 4 time points. The detection threshold test was repeatedly conducted in 64 healthy subjects. On the first testing session, the threshold test was accomplished 3 times (T(1) = 0 min, T(2) = 35 min, and T(3) = 105 min), representing a short-term testing. A fourth threshold test was conducted on a second testing session (T(4) = 35.1 days after the first testing session), representing a long-term testing. The average scores for olfactory detection threshold for n-butanol did not differ significantly across the 4 points of time. The test-retest reliability (Pearson"s r) between the 4 time points of threshold testing were in a range of 0.43-0.85 (P < 0.01). These results support the notion that the olfactory detection threshold test is a highly reliable method for repeated olfactory testing, even if the test is repeated more than once per day and over a long-term period. It is concluded that the olfactory detection threshold test of the Sniffin" Sticks is suitable for repeated testing during experimental or clinical studies.}, language = {en} } @article{PollatosKurzAlbrechtetal.2008, author = {Pollatos, Olga and Kurz, Anne-Lene and Albrecht, Jessica and Schreder, Tatjana and Kleemann, Anna Maria and Sch{\"o}pf, Veronika and Kopietz, Rainer and Wiesmann, Martin and Schandry, Rainer}, title = {Reduced perception of bodily signals in anorexia nervosa}, issn = {1471-0153}, year = {2008}, abstract = {OBJECTIVE: Interoceptive awareness is known to be impaired in eating disorders. To date, it has remained unclear whether this variable is related to the construct of interoceptive sensitivity. Interoceptive sensitivity is considered to be an essential variable in emotional processes. The objective of the study was to elucidate this potential relationship and to clarify whether general interoceptive sensitivity is reduced in anorexia nervosa. METHODS: Using a heartbeat perception task, interoceptive sensitivity was assessed in 28 female patients with anorexia nervosa and 28 matched healthy controls. Questionnaires assessing interoceptive awareness (EDI) and several other variables were also administered. RESULTS: Patients with anorexia nervosa displayed significantly decreased interoceptive sensitivity. They also had more difficulties in interoceptive awareness. CONCLUSIONS: In addition to a decreased ability to recognize certain visceral sensations related to hunger, there is a generally reduced capacity to accurately perceive bodily signals in anorexia nervosa. This highlights the potential importance of interoceptive sensitivity in the pathogenesis of eating disorders.}, language = {en} } @article{KochPollatos2015, author = {Koch, Anne and Pollatos, Olga}, title = {Reduced facial emotion recognition in overweight and obese children}, series = {Journal of psychosomatic research}, volume = {79}, journal = {Journal of psychosomatic research}, number = {6}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0022-3999}, doi = {10.1016/j.jpsychores.2015.06.005}, pages = {635 -- 639}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Objective: Emotional problems often co-occur in overweight or obese children. However, questions of whether emotion recognition deficits are present and how they are reflected have only been sparsely investigated to date. Methods: Therefore, the present study included 33 overweight and obese as well as 33 normal weight elementary school children between six and ten years that were matched for sex, age and socioeconomic status. Participants were shown different emotional faces of a well-validated set of stimuli on a computer screen, which they categorized and then rated on an emotional intensity level. Key measures were categorization performance along with reaction times and emotional intelligence as well as emotional eating questionnaire ratings. Results: Overweight children exhibited lower categorization accuracy as well as longer reaction times as compared to normal weight children, while no differences in intensity ratings occurred. Reaction time to neutral facial expressions was negatively related to intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional intelligence and emotional eating correlated negatively with accuracy for recognizing sad expressions. Conclusion: Facial emotion decoding difficulties seem to be of importance in overweight and obese children and deserve further consideration in terms of their exact impact on social functioning as well as on the maintenance of elevated body weight during child development. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{MatthiasSchandryDuscheketal.2009, author = {Matthias, Ellen and Schandry, R. and Duschek, S. and Pollatos, Olga}, title = {On the relationship between interoceptive awareness and the attentional processing of visual stimuli}, issn = {0167-8760}, year = {2009}, abstract = {Mental processes related to visceral activity have gained growing interest during the last few years. The following study is the first to investigate possible interactions between interoceptive awareness and measures of attentional performance. We tested the hypothesis whether interoceptive awareness is positively related to indices of selective and divided attentional performances. Using a heartbeat perception task, 29 healthy female participants were separated into two groups scoring either high or low in an interoceptive awareness task. Attentional performance was assessed by several tests including the 'd2 test of attention' and subtests from the 'TAP: Test Battery for Attentional Performance'. We observed a significantly better performance in selective and divided attention for participants with high interoceptive awareness. Our data suggests that interoceptive awareness is related to a better performance especially in tasks assessing selective and divided attention. We conclude 1) that perception of bodily states might be a crucial determinant for the processing of external, visual stimuli, 2) that the ability to perceive internal signals might be an indicator of self-focused attention, and 3) that bodily signals may use, at least in part, similar processing resources as signals from the attention system.}, language = {en} } @article{HerbertHerbertPollatos2011, author = {Herbert, Beate M. and Herbert, Cornelia and Pollatos, Olga}, title = {On the relationship between interoceptive awareness and alexithymia - is interoceptive awareness related to emotional awareness?}, series = {Journal of personality}, volume = {79}, journal = {Journal of personality}, number = {5}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Malden}, issn = {0022-3506}, doi = {10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00717.x}, pages = {1149 -- 1175}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Interoceptive awareness (IA) is associated with emotional experience, the processing of emotional stimuli, and activation of brain structures that monitor the internal visceral and emotional state of the organism. Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in identifying and describing one's emotions and externally oriented thinking (EOT) and reflects impairments in emotional awareness and the regulation of emotions. This study examined the relationship between alexithymia and IA in a healthy population of N = 155 persons. A well-validated heartbeat perception task to measure interoceptive awareness, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and a depression questionnaire (BDI-2) were administered to 88 women and 67 men. IA was inversely associated with all features of alexithymia in the whole sample. When considering sex differences, IA turned out to be a relevant negative predictor for the EOT subscale only in men. This large sample investigation in a nonclinical population indicates that IA represents a relevant negative predictor for alexithymia.}, language = {en} } @article{PollatosFuestoesCritchley2012, author = {Pollatos, Olga and Fuestoes, Juergen and Critchley, Hugo D.}, title = {On the generalised embodiment of pain: how interoceptive sensitivity modulates cutaneous pain perception}, series = {Pain : journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain}, volume = {153}, journal = {Pain : journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain}, number = {8}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0304-3959}, doi = {10.1016/j.pain.2012.04.030}, pages = {1680 -- 1686}, year = {2012}, abstract = {Individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity are associated with differences in reported intensity of emotional experience, vulnerability to anxiety and mood disorder and capacity for emotional self-regulation. Enhanced sensitivity to autonomic state is often accompanied by increased autonomic reactivity. Here we tested the hypothesis that healthy people classified as more interoceptively sensitive, by their performance of a heartbeat monitoring task, will demonstrate enhanced perception of pain. We further explored whether this effect is associated with a greater physiological reactivity to the pain stimuli. Using an algometer, cutaneous pressure pain was applied to the thenar eminence in 60 healthy participants. Heart rate variability and respiratory activity were recorded concurrently. We observed significant relationships between heightened interoceptive sensitivity and both enhanced sensitivity and decreased tolerance to pain. These effects were accompanied by a more pronounced parasympathetic decrease and a change in sympathovagal balance during pain assessment in the high, compared to the low, interoceptively sensitive group. Our study provides novel evidence that interoceptive sensitivity is associated with the experience and tolerability of pain in conjunction with reactive changes in autonomic balance.}, language = {en} } @article{FuestoesGramannHerbertetal.2013, author = {F{\"u}st{\"o}s, J{\"u}rgen and Gramann, Klaus and Herbert, Beate M. and Pollatos, Olga}, title = {On the embodiment of emotion regulation - interoceptive awareness facilitates reappraisal}, series = {Frontiers in human neuroscience}, volume = {8}, journal = {Frontiers in human neuroscience}, number = {8}, publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {1749-5016}, doi = {10.1093/scan/nss089}, pages = {911 -- 917}, year = {2013}, abstract = {The ability to cognitively regulate emotional responses to aversive events is essential for mental and physical health. One prerequisite of successful emotion regulation is the awareness of emotional states, which in turn is associated with the awareness of bodily signals [interoceptive awareness (IA)]. This study investigated the neural dynamics of reappraisal of emotional responses in 28 participants who differed with respect to IA. Electroencephalography was used to characterize the time course of emotion regulation. We found that reappraisal was accompanied by reduced arousal and significant modulation of late neural responses. What is more, higher IA facilitated downregulation of affect and was associated with more pronounced modulation of underlying neural activity. Therefore, we conclude that IA not only advances the consolidation of somatic markers required for guiding individual behaviour but also creates processing advantages in tasks referring to these bodily markers.}, language = {en} } @article{SchrederAlbrechtKleemannetal.2008, author = {Schreder, Tatjana and Albrecht, Jessica and Kleemann, Anna Maria and Kopietz, Rainer and Anzinger, Andrea and Demmel, Maria and Linn, Jennifer and Pollatos, Olga and Wiesmann, Martin and Schoepf, Veronika}, title = {Olfactory performance of patients with anorexia nervosa and healthy subjects in hunger and satiety}, year = {2008}, abstract = {The aim of this study was to compare the olfactory performance of anorectic patients and healthy controls with regard to the state of satiety. Using the Sniffin" Sticks, sensitivity to a nonfood odor (n-butanol) and to a food- related odor (isoamyl acetate) was assessed in 12 anorectic females and compared with 24 healthy controls. Threshold tests were performed in a hungry as well as in a satiated state, odor discrimination and odor identification only when satiated. Pleasantness of the odors was recorded. In terms of the non-food odor n-butanol, the olfactory sensitivity of anorectic patients and controls did not differ. Patients with anorexia nervosa had a significantly lower detection threshold for the food-related odor, but only in the hungry condition. Anorectic patients showed significant deficits in odor discrimination and identification, and under-evaluated the pleasantness of isoamyl acetate. Our results suggest an impaired projection from secondary to tertiary olfactory structures in anorexia nervosa, based upon the dichotomy of performance between detection threshold and odor discrimination/dentification. The reduced pleasantness of isoamyl acetate indicates a decreased olfactory responsiveness to food stimuli in anorexia nervosa.}, language = {en} } @article{OhlWohltatKliegletal.2016, author = {Ohl, Sven and Wohltat, Christian and Kliegl, Reinhold and Pollatos, Olga and Engbert, Ralf}, title = {Microsaccades Are Coupled to Heartbeat}, series = {The journal of neuroscience}, volume = {36}, journal = {The journal of neuroscience}, publisher = {Society for Neuroscience}, address = {Washington}, issn = {0270-6474}, doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2211-15.2016}, pages = {1237 -- 1241}, year = {2016}, abstract = {During visual fixation, the eye generates microsaccades and slower components of fixational eye movements that are part of the visual processing strategy in humans. Here, we show that ongoing heartbeat is coupled to temporal rate variations in the generation of microsaccades. Using coregistration of eye recording and ECG in humans, we tested the hypothesis that microsaccade onsets are coupled to the relative phase of the R-R intervals in heartbeats. We observed significantly more microsaccades during the early phase after the R peak in the ECG. This form of coupling between heartbeat and eye movements was substantiated by the additional finding of a coupling between heart phase and motion activity in slow fixational eye movements; i.e., retinal image slip caused by physiological drift. Our findings therefore demonstrate a coupling of the oculomotor system and ongoing heartbeat, which provides further evidence for bodily influences on visuomotor functioning.}, language = {en} }