Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa, USA.
Department of Emergency Medicine, Great River Health System, West Burlington, Iowa, USA.
Exp Aging Res. 2024 May-Jun;50(3):279-295. doi: 10.1080/0361073X.2023.2183704. Epub 2023 Mar 5.
Interoception is the detection of signals that arise from within the body. Interoceptive sensitivity has been found to be associated with affect and cognition among younger adults, and examination of these relationships in older adult samples is beginning to emerge. Here, we take an exploratory approach to determine how demographic, affective, and cognitive variables relate to interoceptive sensitivity in neurologically normal older adults, aged 60-91 years old. Ninety-one participants completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, self-report questionnaires, and a heartbeat counting task to measure interoceptive sensitivity. Our findings revealed several relationships: 1) interoceptive sensitivity was inversely correlated with measures of positive emotionality: participants with higher interoceptive sensitivity tended to have lower levels of positive affect and trait extraversion; 2) interoceptive sensitivity was found to positively correlate with cognition: participants who performed better on the heartbeat-counting task also tended to perform better on a measure of delayed verbal memory; and 3) when examining the predictors of interoceptive sensitivity in a single hierarchical regression model, higher interoceptive sensitivity was related to: higher time estimation, lower positive affect, lower extraversion, and higher verbal memory. In total, the model accounted for 38% of the variability in interoceptive sensitivity ( = .38). These results suggest that, among older adults, interoceptive sensitivity is facilitative for aspects of cognition but perhaps disruptive for certain aspects of emotional experience.
内感受是对来自体内信号的检测。内感受敏感性已被发现与年轻成年人的情感和认知有关，而对老年成年人样本中这些关系的研究也开始出现。在这里，我们采用探索性方法来确定在神经正常的老年成年人（60-91 岁）中，人口统计学、情感和认知变量如何与内感受敏感性相关。91 名参与者完成了全面的神经心理学测试、自我报告问卷和心跳计数任务，以测量内感受敏感性。我们的研究结果揭示了一些关系：1）内感受敏感性与积极情感的衡量标准呈负相关：内感受敏感性较高的参与者往往具有较低的积极情绪和特质外向性；2）内感受敏感性与认知呈正相关：在心跳计数任务中表现更好的参与者往往在延迟言语记忆测量中表现更好；3）在单一层次回归模型中检查内感受敏感性的预测因素时，较高的内感受敏感性与：更高的时间估计、更低的积极情绪、更低的外向性和更高的言语记忆有关。总的来说，该模型解释了内感受敏感性 38%的变异性（ = .38）。这些结果表明，在老年人中，内感受敏感性有助于认知的某些方面，但可能会干扰某些情感体验。
