Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, USA.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University, USA.
Dev Sci. 2017 Sep;20(5). doi: 10.1111/desc.12438. Epub 2016 Jun 19.
Adolescence is hypothesized to be a critical period for the maturation of self-regulatory capacities, including those that depend on interoceptive sensitivity, but the neural basis of interoceptive regulation in adolescence is unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and psychophysiology to study interoceptive regulation in healthy adolescent females. Participants regulated their gut activities in response to a virtual roller coaster by deep breathing aided by visually monitoring their online electrogastrogram (EGG) activity through a virtual thermometer (i.e. gut biofeedback), or without biofeedback. Analyses focused on the insula, given its putative role in interoception. The bilateral posterior insula showed increased activation in the no-biofeedback compared to biofeedback condition, suggesting that the participants relied more on interoceptive input when exteroceptive feedback was unavailable. The bilateral dorsal anterior insula showed activation linearly associated with age during both induction and regulation, and its activation during regulation correlated positively with change of EGG in the tachygastria frequency band from induction to regulation. Induction-related activation in the bilateral ventral anterior insula was nonlinearly associated with age and peaked at mid-adolescence. These results implicate different developmental trajectories of distinct sub-regions of the insula in interoceptive processes, with implications for competing neurobiological theories of female adolescent development.
青春期被假设为自我调节能力成熟的关键时期，包括依赖于内脏感觉敏感性的自我调节能力，但青春期内脏感觉调节的神经基础尚不清楚。我们使用功能磁共振成像和心理生理学研究了健康青春期女性的内脏感觉调节。参与者通过深呼吸来调节肠道活动，同时通过虚拟温度计（即肠道生物反馈）在线监测他们的在线胃电图（EGG）活动，或者在没有生物反馈的情况下进行调节。分析集中在岛叶上，因为它在内脏感觉中具有假定的作用。与生物反馈条件相比，在后岛叶的双侧显示出在没有生物反馈条件下的激活增加，这表明参与者在外部反馈不可用时更依赖于内脏感觉输入。双侧背侧前岛叶在诱导和调节期间均与年龄呈线性相关，其在调节期间的激活与从诱导到调节的快胃活动频段的 EGG 变化呈正相关。双侧腹侧前岛叶的诱导相关激活与年龄呈非线性相关，在青春期中期达到峰值。这些结果表明，岛叶的不同亚区在内脏感觉过程中存在不同的发展轨迹，这对女性青少年发育的竞争神经生物学理论具有影响。
