TY - JOUR A1 - Herbert, Beate M. A1 - Herbert, Cornelia A1 - Pollatos, Olga A1 - Weimer, Katja A1 - Sauer, Helene A1 - Enck, Paul A1 - Zipfel, Stephan T1 - Effects of short-term food deprivation on interoceptive awareness, feelings and autonomic cardiac activity : implications for eating disorders N2 - Poster session abstracts. Poster 9 Y1 - 2010 UR - http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/issn?DESCRIPTOR=PRINTISSN&VALUE=0048-5772 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2010.01111.x SN - 0048-5772 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 - Herbert, Cornelia A1 - Pollatos, Olga T1 - On the relationship between interoceptive awareness and alexithymia - is interoceptive awareness related to emotional awareness? JF - Journal of personality N2 - Interoceptive awareness (IA) is associated with emotional experience, the processing of emotional stimuli, and activation of brain structures that monitor the internal visceral and emotional state of the organism. Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in identifying and describing one's emotions and externally oriented thinking (EOT) and reflects impairments in emotional awareness and the regulation of emotions. This study examined the relationship between alexithymia and IA in a healthy population of N = 155 persons. A well-validated heartbeat perception task to measure interoceptive awareness, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and a depression questionnaire (BDI-2) were administered to 88 women and 67 men. IA was inversely associated with all features of alexithymia in the whole sample. When considering sex differences, IA turned out to be a relevant negative predictor for the EOT subscale only in men. This large sample investigation in a nonclinical population indicates that IA represents a relevant negative predictor for alexithymia. Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00717.x SN - 0022-3506 VL - 79 IS - 5 SP - 1149 EP - 1175 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Malden 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 - Dietel, Anja A1 - Herbert, Beate M. A1 - Wankner, Sarah A1 - Wachsmuth, Cornelia A1 - Henningsen, Peter A1 - Sack, Martin T1 - Blunted autonomic reactivity and increased pain tolerance in somatoform patients JF - Pain : journal of the International Association for the Study of Pain N2 - Somatoform disorders are characterized by the presence of multiple somatic symptoms. Patients often experience different pain syndromes, and recent research suggests that sympathovagal balance is disturbed in somatoform patients, which could be related to alteration in pain sensitivity. This study analyzed how proposed sympathovagal imbalance interacts with objective pain assessment and the imagination of pain in somatoform disorders. Twenty-one patients (4 men) with diagnosed multisomatoform disorder were included in the study and matched to healthy control subjects. Autonomic measures and heart rate variability were assessed during baseline; pain perception was assessed by means of a pressure algometer and pain imagination. We found evidence for a sympathovagal imbalance in somatoform disorders characterized by low parasympathetic activation and high sympathetic activation during all conditions. Additionally, somatoform patients had reduced pain tolerance. Vagal withdrawal during pain assessment was more pronounced for healthy control subjects and correlated positively with assessed pain tolerance. During imagination somatoform, patients reported higher pain unpleasantness and higher pain intensity as compared to control subjects. We conclude that our data demonstrate an imbalance in sympathovagal activation and a hyposensitivity to pain tolerance stimuli in somatoform disorders. Parasympathetic reactivity might form crucial information when judging pain-associated affective-motivational components. Our results might be attributable to a deficient detection of visceral signals and might be a pathogenetic mechanism for the development of emotional difficulties and increased everyday vulnerability in somatoform patients. KW - Autonomic KW - Heart rate variability KW - Pain threshold KW - Pain tolerance KW - Response KW - Somatoform disorder KW - Sympathovagal balance Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pain.2011.05.024 SN - 0304-3959 VL - 152 IS - 9 SP - 2157 EP - 2164 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - 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 -