TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pollatos, Olga
A1  - Herbert, Beate M.
A1  - Wankner, Sarah
A1  - Dietel, Anja
A1  - Wachsmuth, Cornelia
A1  - Henningsen, Peter
A1  - Sack, Martin
T1  - Autonomic imbalance is associated with reduced facial recognition in somatoform disorders
JF  - Journal of psychosomatic research
N2  - 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.
KW  - Somatoform disorder
KW  - Interoceptive awareness
KW  - Facial recognition
KW  - Autonomic response
KW  - Heart rate variability
Y1  - 2011
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2011.03.012
SN  - 0022-3999
VL  - 71
IS  - 4
SP  - 232
EP  - 239
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
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  - 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  -