@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{KochPollatos2014, author = {Koch, Anne and Pollatos, Olga}, title = {Cardiac sensitivity in children: Sex differences and its relationship to parameters of emotional processing}, series = {Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research}, volume = {51}, journal = {Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research}, number = {9}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0048-5772}, doi = {10.1111/psyp.12233}, pages = {932 -- 941}, year = {2014}, abstract = {In adults, the level of ability to perceive one's own body signals plays an important role for many concepts of emotional experience as demonstrated for emotion processing or emotion regulation. Representative data on perception of body signals and its emotional correlates in children is lacking. Therefore, the present study investigated the cardiac sensitivity of 1,350 children between 6 and 11 years of age in a heartbeat perception task. Our main findings demonstrated the distribution of cardiac sensitivity in children as well as associations with interpersonal emotional intelligence and adaptability. Furthermore, independent of body mass index, boys showed a significantly higher cardiac sensitivity than girls. We conclude that cardiac sensitivity in children appears to show weaker but similar characteristics and relations to emotional parameters as found in adults, so that a dynamic developmental process can be assumed.}, language = {en} }