Department of Kinesiology and Health, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA; Louvain Experimental Psychopathology research group (LEP), Psychological Science Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Developmental Psychopathology Department, Psychology School, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2024 Oct 1;263:111398. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2024.111398. Epub 2024 Jul 25.
Our brain uses interoceptive signals from the body to shape how we perceive emotions in others; however, whether interoceptive signals can be manipulated to alter emotional perceptions is unknown. This registered report examined whether alcohol administration triggers physiological changes that alter interoceptive signals and manipulate emotional face processing.
Participants (n=36) were administered an alcohol or placebo beverage. Cardiovascular physiology (Heartrate variability, HRD) was recorded before and after administration. Participants completed a behavioral task in which emotional faces were presented in synchrony with different phases of the cardiac cycle (i.e., systole/diastole) to index of how interoceptive signals amplify them.
We hypothesized that alcohol administration would disrupt the cardiac amplification of emotional face processing. We further explored whether this disruption depended on the nature and magnitude of changes in cardiovascular physiology after alcohol administration.
We observed no main effects or interactions between alcohol administration and emotional face processing. We found that HRV at baseline negatively correlated with the cardiac amplification of emotional faces. The extent to which alcohol impacted HRV negatively correlated with the cardiac amplification of angry faces.
This registered report failed to validate the primary hypotheses but offers some evidence that the effects of alcohol on emotional face processing, if any, could be mediated via changes in basic physiological signals that are integrated via interoceptive mechanisms. Results are interpreted within the context of interoceptive inference and could feed novel perspectives for the interplay between physiological sensitivity and interoception in the development of drug-related behaviors.
我们的大脑利用来自身体的内感受信号来塑造我们对他人情绪的感知；然而，内感受信号是否可以被操纵来改变情绪感知尚不清楚。本预注册报告研究了酒精摄入是否会引发生理变化，从而改变内感受信号并操纵情绪面孔处理。
参与者（n=36）被给予酒精或安慰剂饮料。在给药前后记录心血管生理学（心率变异性，HRV）。参与者完成了一项行为任务，在该任务中，情绪面孔与心脏周期的不同阶段（即收缩/舒张）同步呈现，以指数形式表示内感受信号如何放大它们。
我们假设酒精摄入会破坏情绪面孔处理的心脏放大作用。我们进一步探讨了这种破坏是否取决于酒精摄入后心血管生理学变化的性质和程度。
我们没有观察到酒精摄入和情绪面孔处理之间的主要效应或相互作用。我们发现，基线时的 HRV 与情绪面孔的心脏放大呈负相关。酒精对 HRV 的影响程度与愤怒面孔的心脏放大呈负相关。
本预注册报告未能验证主要假设，但提供了一些证据表明，酒精对情绪面孔处理的影响（如果有的话）可能是通过内感受机制整合的基本生理信号的变化介导的。结果在内感受推断的背景下进行了解释，并为生理敏感性和内感受在药物相关行为发展中的相互作用提供了新的视角。
