Interoception, Emotion and Self: How the Heart Gates Feelings and Perceptions

Hugo Critchley (Brighton and Sussex Medical School)

Information concerning the internal state of the body is arguably the basis for emotional feelings and may serve as the primary reference for the development of self-representation underpinning many aspects of consciousness. The combination of functional and structural neuroimaging, autonomic psychophysiology and patient studies has provided valuable insight into the brain mechanisms though which thoughts, feelings and behaviours are integrated with the signalling and control of bodily state. Recently, we have revisited the issue of how information concerning the timing and strength of individual heartbeats influences the perception and encoding of environmental and self-related stimuli. Our observations indicate that this channel of afferent viscerosensory signalling differentially impacts upon the processing of threat, enhancing the detection and salience of threat signals. This contrasts with the observed inhibition of other types of sensory processing including responses to pain stimuli. The study of interoceptive representations within the brain and their influence on perception cognition and emotion is revealing mechanisms relevant to consciousness science and disorders of selfhood that ultimately may inform new clinical therapeutic targets.