@article{HerbertHerbertPollatosetal.2012, author = {Herbert, Beate M. and Herbert, Cornelia and Pollatos, Olga and Weimer, Katja and Enck, Paul and Sauer, Helene and Zipfel, Stephan}, title = {Effects of short-term food deprivation on interoceptive awareness, feelings and autonomic cardiac activity}, series = {Biological psychology}, volume = {89}, journal = {Biological psychology}, number = {1}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0301-0511}, doi = {10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.09.004}, pages = {71 -- 79}, year = {2012}, abstract = {The perception of internal bodily signals (interoception) plays a relevant role for emotion processing and feelings. This study investigated changes of interoceptive awareness and cardiac autonomic activity induced by short-term food deprivation and its relationship to hunger and affective experience. 20 healthy women were exposed to 24 h of food deprivation in a controlled setting. Interoceptive awareness was assessed by using a heartbeat tracking task. Felt hunger, cardiac autonomic activity, mood and subjective appraisal of interoceptive sensations were assessed before and after fasting. Results show that short-term fasting intensifies interoceptive awareness, not restricted to food cues, via changes of autonomic cardiac and/or cardiodynamic activity. The increase of interoceptive awareness was positively related to felt hunger. Additionally, the results demonstrate the role of cardiac vagal activity as a potential index of emotion related self-regulation, for hunger, mood and the affective appraisal of interoceptive signals during acute fasting.}, language = {en} }