Weiss Sarah, Sack Martin, Henningsen Peter, Pollatos Olga
Health Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany.
Psychopathology. 2014;47(6):377-82. doi: 10.1159/000365107. Epub 2014 Oct 22.
Interoceptive processes were found to be associated with better self-regulation capacities in healthy participants. Further empirical research suggests that interoceptive sensitivity is also important for the perception of pain both in healthy participants and in somatoform patients. Nevertheless, little is known about the interaction of interoceptive processes and self-regulation for pain. We therefore conducted a study examining the interaction of interoception and self-regulation in somatoform patients.
We investigated interoceptive sensitivity and self-regulatory capacities in 30 somatoform patients and 30 healthy controls when experimentally assessing pain threshold and pain tolerance.
Interoceptive sensitivity was associated with better self-regulation capacities. Somatoform patients exhibited a significantly reduced interoceptive sensitivity and reduced self-regulatory capacities as assessed by self-report. Additionally, pain tolerance was significantly increased in somatoform patients as compared to controls.
Our findings highlight that interoceptive sensitivity differentially interacts with pain and self-regulation both in healthy participants and somatoform patients. This might provide ideas for novel therapeutic interventions, e.g. a combined training of interoceptive sensitivity with certain aspects of self-regulation.
在健康参与者中，内感受过程被发现与更好的自我调节能力相关。进一步的实证研究表明，内感受敏感性对于健康参与者和躯体形式障碍患者的疼痛感知也很重要。然而，关于内感受过程与疼痛自我调节的相互作用知之甚少。因此，我们进行了一项研究，考察躯体形式障碍患者的内感受与自我调节的相互作用。
在通过实验评估疼痛阈值和疼痛耐受力时，我们调查了30名躯体形式障碍患者和30名健康对照者的内感受敏感性和自我调节能力。
内感受敏感性与更好的自我调节能力相关。通过自我报告评估，躯体形式障碍患者表现出显著降低的内感受敏感性和自我调节能力。此外，与对照组相比，躯体形式障碍患者的疼痛耐受力显著增加。
我们的研究结果突出表明，在健康参与者和躯体形式障碍患者中，内感受敏感性与疼痛和自我调节的相互作用存在差异。这可能为新型治疗干预提供思路，例如将内感受敏感性与自我调节的某些方面进行联合训练。
