TY - JOUR A1 - Pollatos, Olga A1 - Gramann, Klaus T1 - Attenuated modulation of brain activity accompanies emotion regulation deficits in alexithymia JF - Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research N2 - The personality trait alexithymia has been associated with deficits in emotion regulation; nevertheless, experimental investigations on this research question are sparse. We investigated reappraisal as one emotion regulation strategy in 44 healthy participants with high (HDA) versus low (LDA) degrees of alexithymia. High density EEG and spatiotemporal current density reconstruction were used to characterize the time course of emotion regulation and to identify brain regions involved. Main results were that reappraisal was accompanied by reduced arousal and significant amplitude reduction of P3 and slow wave in the LDA group only. In contrast to the LDA group, reappraisal was not associated with an increase of activation in fusiform gyrus and inferior temporal gyrus in the HDA group. We demonstrate profound deficits in emotion regulation, which might contribute to everyday problems of social functioning in alexithymia. KW - Alexithymia KW - Emotion regulation KW - Reappraisal KW - Evoked potentials KW - Current source density reconstruction Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2011.01348.x SN - 0048-5772 VL - 49 IS - 5 SP - 651 EP - 658 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herbert, Beate M. A1 - Herbert, Cornelia A1 - Pollatos, Olga A1 - Weimer, Katja A1 - Enck, Paul A1 - Sauer, Helene A1 - Zipfel, Stephan T1 - Effects of short-term food deprivation on interoceptive awareness, feelings and autonomic cardiac activity JF - Biological psychology N2 - 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. KW - Interoceptive awareness KW - Hunger KW - Autonomic activity KW - Food deprivation KW - Self-regulation KW - Eating disorders Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.09.004 SN - 0301-0511 VL - 89 IS - 1 SP - 71 EP - 79 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kühnpast, Nicole A1 - Gramann, Klaus A1 - Pollatos, Olga T1 - Electrophysiologic evidence for multilevel deficits in emotional face processing in patients with Bulimia Nervosa JF - Psychosomatic medicine N2 - Background: Empirical evidence suggests substantial deficits regarding emotion recognition in bulimia nervosa (BN). The aim of the current study was to investigate electrophysiologic evidence for deficits in emotional face processing in patients with BN. Methods: Event-related potentials were recorded from 13 women with BN and 13 matched healthy controls while viewing neutral, happy, fearful, and angry facial expressions. Participants' recognition performance for emotional faces was tested in a subsequent categorization task. In addition, the degree of alexithymia, depression, and anxiety were assessed via questionnaires. Results: Categorization of emotional faces was hampered in BN (p = .01). Amplitudes of event-related potentials differed during emotional face processing: face-specific N170 amplitudes were less pronounced for angry faces in patients with BN (mean [M] [standard deviation {SD}] = 1.46 [0.56] mu V versus M [SD] = -1.23 [0.61] mu V, p = .02). In contrast, P3 amplitudes were more pronounced in patients with BN as compared with controls (M [SD] = 2.64 [0.46] mu V versus M [SD] = 1.25 [0.39] mu V, p = .04), independent of emotional expression. Conclusions: The study provides novel electrophysiologic data showing that emotional faces are processed differently in patients with BN as compared with healthy controls. We suggest that deficits in early automatic emotion classification in BN are followed by an increased allocation of attentional resources to compensate for those deficits. These findings might contribute to a better understanding of the impaired social functioning in BN. KW - eating disorders KW - bulimia nervosa KW - EEG KW - emotions KW - face recognition KW - N170 KW - N2 KW - P3 Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0b013e31825ca15a SN - 0033-3174 VL - 74 IS - 7 SP - 736 EP - 744 PB - Lippincott Williams & Wilkins CY - Philadelphia ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pollatos, Olga A1 - Herbert, Beate M. A1 - Fuestoes, Juergen A1 - Weimer, Katja A1 - Enck, Paul A1 - Zipfel, Stephan T1 - Food deprivation sensitizes pain perception JF - International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology N2 - While food deprivation has known effects on sympathovagal balance, little is known about hunger's influence on the perception of pain. Since autonomic activities influence many cognitive and emotional processes, this suggests that food deprivation should interact with the perception of pain. This study analyzed the possible effects of short-term food deprivation on pain sensitivity in healthy female participants. This study was comprised of 32 healthy female participants who underwent a 48-hr inpatient hospital investigation. Prior to testing, heart rate and heart rate variability were assessed. After a standardized breakfast, day 1 measurements were taken. Food intake was then not allowed again until the following evening for 22 participants (experimental group), while 12 participants were served standard meals (control group). Pain threshold and tolerance were assessed at 10:00 a. m. on both days using a pressure algometer. Additionally pain experience was examined. Food deprivation significantly reduced pain thresholds and tolerance scores in the experimental group. Additionally, the sympathovagal balance changed, characterized by a decrease in parasympathetic activation. Higher vagal withdrawal after food deprivation was associated with higher pain sensitivity in the experimental group. Furthermore, perceived unpleasantness and pain intensity increased for threshold and tolerance stimuli in the experimental group. We conclude that short-term food deprivation sensitized pain perception in healthy females. An imbalance in sympathovagal activation evoked by food deprivation accounted for this effect. Our results might be a pathogenic mechanism for the development of emotional difficulties associated with disturbed eating behavior. KW - short-term food deprivation KW - pain threshold KW - pain tolerance KW - sympathovagal balance Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1027/0269-8803/a000062 SN - 0269-8803 VL - 26 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 9 PB - Hogrefe CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herbert, Beate M. A1 - Muth, Eric R. A1 - Pollatos, Olga A1 - Herbert, Cornelia T1 - Interoception across modalities on the relationship between cardiac awareness and the sensitivity for gastric functions JF - PLoS one N2 - The individual sensitivity for ones internal bodily signals ("interoceptive awareness'') has been shown to be of relevance for a broad range of cognitive and affective functions. Interoceptive awareness has been primarily assessed via measuring the sensitivity for ones cardiac signals ("cardiac awareness'') which can be non-invasively measured by heartbeat perception tasks. It is an open question whether cardiac awareness is related to the sensitivity for other bodily, visceral functions. This study investigated the relationship between cardiac awareness and the sensitivity for gastric functions in healthy female persons by using non-invasive methods. Heartbeat perception as a measure for cardiac awareness was assessed by a heartbeat tracking task and gastric sensitivity was assessed by a water load test. Gastric myoelectrical activity was measured by electrogastrography (EGG) and subjective feelings of fullness, valence, arousal and nausea were assessed. The results show that cardiac awareness was inversely correlated with ingested water volume and with normogastric activity after water load. However, persons with good and poor cardiac awareness did not differ in their subjective ratings of fullness, nausea and affective feelings after drinking. This suggests that good heartbeat perceivers ingested less water because they subjectively felt more intense signals of fullness during this lower amount of water intake compared to poor heartbeat perceivers who ingested more water until feeling the same signs of fullness. These findings demonstrate that cardiac awareness is related to greater sensitivity for gastric functions, suggesting that there is a general sensitivity for interoceptive processes across the gastric and cardiac modality. Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036646 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 7 IS - 5 PB - PLoS CY - San Fransisco ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pollatos, Olga A1 - Fuestoes, Juergen A1 - Critchley, Hugo D. T1 - On the generalised embodiment of pain: how interoceptive sensitivity modulates cutaneous pain perception JF - Pain : journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain N2 - 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. KW - Cutaneous pain perception KW - Embodiment KW - Insula KW - Interoception KW - Interoceptive sensitivity Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pain.2012.04.030 SN - 0304-3959 VL - 153 IS - 8 SP - 1680 EP - 1686 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herbert, Beate M. A1 - Pollatos, Olga T1 - The body in the mind On the relationship between interoception and embodiment JF - Topics in cognitive science N2 - 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. KW - Interoception KW - Interoceptive awareness KW - Emotions KW - Time perception KW - Disturbances of embodiment KW - Alexithymia KW - Eating disorder KW - Self Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01189.x SN - 1756-8757 VL - 4 IS - 4 SP - 692 EP - 704 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER -