Brain structures involved in interoceptive awareness and cardioafferent signal processing: A dipole source localization study
Open accessAbstract
Afferent signals from the body play an important role for emotional and motivational aspects of behavior. Nevertheless, little is known about the cortical and subcortical structures involved in interoceptive processes. Recently, a functional MRI study demonstrated that insula, somatomotor, and cingulated cortices are activated when subjects focus attention on their heartbeats. Aside from the use of imaging data, cardiac awareness has frequently been studied by using the heartbeat‐evoked potential (HEP), a brain wave that appears contingent on the heartbeat. The present study aimed at localizing sources of the HEP. Multichannel EEG was recorded in 44 subjects while they performed a heartbeat perception task. This task was used to quantify interoceptive awareness and to subdivide the subjects into good and poor heartbeat perceivers. Analyses showed highest HEP amplitudes over frontal and frontocentral electrode locations in the time range of later than 200 ms after R‐wave onset. By means of a BESA dipole‐source‐analysis, four sources of the HEP were identified which were located in the anterior cingulate, the right insula, the prefrontal cortex, and the left secondary somatosensory cortex. Good heartbeat perceivers showed both significantly higher HEP amplitudes and higher dipole strength than poor heartbeat perceivers in all four cortical sources. We conclude that the identified structures are involved in the processing of cardiac signals, whereby anterior cingulate and right insula seem to serve as interoceptive centers for cardioception. Hum Brain Mapping, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
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Turning attention inwards and explicitly attending to one's own heartbeats consistently modulates HERs.
“Turning attention inwards and explicitly attending to one's own heartbeats consistently modulates HERs 92-98 .”
From Interoceptive rhythms in the brain (2023) · cites this paper as [95]
The Experimental Procedure section says participants attended to their heartbeats during counting, and the HEP Amplitude, Source Modeling, and Interoceptive Awareness section reports higher HEP amplitudes in better heartbeat perceivers. The study does not compare attending to heartbeats with directing attention elsewhere, so it does not establish that turning attention inward itself modulates HEPs. Page numbers are not available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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- Authors
- Pollatos, O., Kirsch, W., & Schandry, R.
- Affiliations
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- Philipps University of Marburg (DE)
- Venue
- Human Brain Mapping
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2005-04-25
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 54-64
- ISSN
- 1065-9471 (ISSN-L)
- 1097-0193
- PMC
- PMC6871699
- OpenAlex
- W2125972773
- Cited by
- 261
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 3.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Human Brain Mapping (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
- Keywords
- interoceptive awareness, heartbeat perception, heartbeat-evoked potentials, anterior cingulate cortex, insula, prefrontal cortex, secondary somatosensory cortex, dipole source localization, interoceptive sensitivity
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Afferent Pathways, Awareness, Brain, Brain Mapping, Electrocardiography, Electroencephalography, Female, Heart, Humans, Male, Principal Component Analysis
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