@article{PollatosHerbertWankneretal.2011,
  author    = {Pollatos, Olga and Herbert, Beate M. and Wankner, Sarah and Dietel, Anja and Wachsmuth, Cornelia and Henningsen, Peter and Sack, Martin},
  title     = {Autonomic imbalance is associated with reduced facial recognition in somatoform disorders},
  series = {Journal of psychosomatic research},
  volume    = {71},
  journal   = {Journal of psychosomatic research},
  number    = {4},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {Oxford},
  issn      = {0022-3999},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.jpsychores.2011.03.012},
  pages     = {232 -- 239},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Objectives: Somatoform disorders are characterized by the presence of multiple somatic symptoms. While the accuracy of perceiving bodily signal (interoceptive awareness) is only sparely investigated in somatoform disorders, recent research has associated autonomic imbalance with cognitive and emotional difficulties in stress-related diseases. This study aimed to investigate how sympathovagal reactivity interacts with performance in recognizing emotions in faces (facial recognition task). Methods: Using a facial recognition and appraisal task, skin conductance levels (SCLs), heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) were assessed in 26 somatoform patients and compared to healthy controls. Interoceptive awareness was assessed by a heartbeat detection task. Results: We found evidence for a sympathovagal imbalance in somatoform disorders characterized by low parasympathetic reactivity during emotional tasks and increased sympathetic activation during baseline. Somatoform patients exhibited a reduced recognition performance for neutral and sad emotional expressions only. Possible confounding variables such as alexithymia, anxiety or depression were taken into account. Interoceptive awareness was reduced in somatoform patients. Conclusions: Our data demonstrate an imbalance in sympathovagal activation in somatoform disorders associated with decreased parasympathetic activation. This might account for difficulties in processing of sad and neutral facial expressions in somatoform patients which might be a pathogenic mechanism for increased everyday vulnerability.},
  language  = {en}
}
@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}
}
@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}
}