Department of Psychology, General and Experimental Psychology Unit, LMU Munich, Germany.
Department of Psychology, General and Experimental Psychology Unit, LMU Munich, Germany.
Neuroimage. 2022 May 1;251:119011. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119011. Epub 2022 Feb 16.
Neuroscientific studies have mainly focused on the way humans perceive and interact with the external world. Recent work in the interoceptive domain indicates that the brain predictively models information from inside the body such as the heartbeat and that the efficiency with which this is executed can have implications for exteroceptive processing. However, to date direct evidence underpinning these hypotheses is lacking. Here, we show how the brain predictively refines neural resources to process afferent cardiac feedback and uses these interoceptive cues to enable more efficient processing of external sensory information. Participants completed a repetition-suppression paradigm consisting of a neutral repeating face. During the first face presentation, they heard auditory feedback of their heartbeat which either coincided with the systole of the cardiac cycle, the time at which cardiac events are registered by the brain or the diastole during which the brain receives no internal cardiac feedback. We used electroencephalography to measure the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP) as well as auditory (AEP) and visual evoked potentials (VEP). Exteroceptive cardiac feedback which coincided with the systole produced significantly higher HEP amplitudes relative to feedback timed to the diastole. Elevation of the HEP in this condition was followed by significant suppression of the VEP in response to the repeated neutral face and a stepwise decrease of AEP amplitude to repeated heartbeat feedback. Our results hereby show that exteroceptive heartbeat feedback coinciding with interoceptive signals at systole enhanced interoceptive cardiac processing. Furthermore, the same cue facilitating interoceptive integration enabled efficient suppression of a visual stimulus, as well as repetition suppression of the AEP across successive auditory heartbeat feedback. Our findings provide evidence that the alignment of external to internal signals can enhance the efficiency of interoceptive processing and that cues facilitating this process in either domain have beneficial effects for internal as well as external sensory processing.
神经科学研究主要集中在人类感知和与外部世界相互作用的方式上。最近在内感受领域的工作表明,大脑可以预测性地对来自体内的信息(如心跳)进行建模,而执行这种预测的效率可以对外感受处理产生影响。然而,迄今为止,这些假设的直接证据还很缺乏。在这里,我们展示了大脑如何预测性地调整神经资源来处理传入的心脏反馈,并利用这些内感受线索来提高对外界感官信息的处理效率。参与者完成了一个重复抑制范式,其中包括一个中性重复的面孔。在第一张脸出现时,他们听到了自己心跳的听觉反馈,这种反馈要么与心脏周期的收缩(即大脑记录心脏事件的时间)同时发生,要么与心脏舒张(即大脑在此期间没有收到内部心脏反馈)同时发生。我们使用脑电图来测量心跳诱发电位(HEP)以及听觉(AEP)和视觉诱发电位(VEP)。与心脏舒张时相比,与收缩同时发生的外感受心脏反馈产生了明显更高的 HEP 幅度。在这种情况下,HEP 的升高伴随着对重复中性面孔的 VEP 的显著抑制,以及对重复心跳反馈的 AEP 幅度的逐步降低。我们的结果表明,与心脏舒张时相比,与内感受信号在收缩时同时发生的外感受心跳反馈增强了内感受心脏处理。此外,同一个促进内感受整合的线索,使我们能够有效地抑制视觉刺激,以及在连续的心跳听觉反馈中重复抑制 AEP。我们的研究结果提供了证据,即外部信号与内部信号的对齐可以提高内感受处理的效率,并且促进这一过程的线索在这两个领域都对内感受和外感受处理都有有益的影响。
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