Response inhibition is disrupted by interoceptive processing at cardiac systole
Abstract
The present study investigated how cardiac signals influence response inhibition at both behavioral and electrophysiological levels by using participants' electrocardiogram signals to control the occurrence of events in a stop-signal task, in which the go cue was unpredictably followed by a stop signal requiring the cancellation of the prepotent response. We observed prolonged stop-signal reaction times, reduced stop-signal P3 amplitudes, and higher heartbeat evoked potential amplitudes when the stop signal was presented at cardiac systole, compared to presentation randomly within the cardiac cycle. These effects were independent of the emotional attribute of the stop signal (i.e., emotional facial expression change or non-emotional color change). Our results suggest that coupling stop signals to peripheral autonomic cardiac signals has an impeding effect on response inhibition, probably via shifting attention from exteroception to interoception. Our findings help clarify the precise impact of interoceptive signals on inhibitory control.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Response inhibition may be influenced by interoception.
“RI may be influenced by interoception (Rae et al., 2018; Ren et al., 2022), which is defined as ‘the sensation and perception of the internal state and the body’ (Feldman et al., 2024).”
From Differences in response inhibition between medication-free patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder with and without sensory phenomena (2026) · cites this paper as Ren et al., 2022
Cites
Thayer, J. F., Hansen, A. L., Saus-Rose, E., & Johnsen, B. H. (2009) · Annals of Behavioral Medicine · doi:10.1007/s12160-009-9101-z · Cited by 1,872 · see citing works
Niendam, T. A., Laird, A. R., Ray, K. L., Dean, Y. M., Glahn, D. C., & Carter, C. S. (2012) · Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience · doi:10.3758/s13415-011-0083-5 · Cited by 1,700 · see citing works
Interoception and Mental Health: A Roadmap.
Khalsa, S. S., Adolphs, R., Cameron, O. G., Critchley, H. D., Davenport, P. W., Feinstein, J. S., Feusner, J. D., Garfinkel, S. N., Lane, R. D., Mehling, W. E., et al. (2018) · Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · doi:10.1016/j.bpsc.2017.12.004 · Cited by 1,453 · see citing works
Visceral influences on brain and behavior
Critchley, H. D., & Harrison, N. A. (2013) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2013.02.008 · Cited by 1,177 · see citing works
Simmonds, D. J., Pekar, J. J., & Mostofsky, S. H. (2008) · Neuropsychologia · doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.07.015 · Cited by 1,015 · see citing works
Verbruggen, F., Aron, A. R., Band, G. P., Beste, C., Bissett, P. G., Brockett, A. T., Brown, J. W., Chamberlain, S. R., Chambers, C. D., Colonius, H., et al. (2019) · eLife · doi:10.7554/elife.46323 · Cited by 990 · see citing works
Active interoceptive inference and the emotional brain
Seth, A. K., & Friston, K. J. (2016) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2016.0007 · Cited by 945 · see citing works
Visceral Signals Shape Brain Dynamics and Cognition
Azzalini, D., Rebollo, I., & Tallon-Baudry, C. (2019) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2019.03.007 · Cited by 409 · see citing works
Large-scale functional neural network correlates of response inhibition: an fMRI meta-analysis
Zhang, R., Geng, X., & Lee, T. M. C. (2017) · Brain Structure and Function · doi:10.1007/s00429-017-1443-x · Cited by 398 · see citing works
Fear from the heart: sensitivity to fear stimuli depends on individual heartbeats
Garfinkel, S. N., Minati, L., Gray, M. A., Seth, A. K., Dolan, R. J., & Critchley, H. D. (2014) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3507-13.2014 · Cited by 338 · see citing works
Coll, M.-P., Hobson, H., Bird, G., & Murphy, J. (2021) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.012 · Cited by 262 · see citing works
Focus of attention modulates the heartbeat evoked potential
Petzschner, F. H., Weber, L. A., Wellstein, K. V., Paolini, G., Do, C. T., & Stephan, K. E. (2019) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.11.037 · Cited by 248 · see citing works
The influence of physiological signals on cognition
Critchley, H. D., & Garfinkel, S. N. (2018) · Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.08.014 · Cited by 178 · see citing works
Response inhibition on the stop signal task improves during cardiac contraction
Rae, C. L., Botan, V. E., Gould van Praag, C. D., Herman, A. M., Nyyssönen, J. A. K., Watson, D. R., Duka, T., Garfinkel, S. N., & Critchley, H. D. (2018) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-018-27513-y · Cited by 83 · see citing works
Villena‐González, M., Moënne‐Loccoz, C., Lagos, R. A., Alliende, L. M., Billeke, P., Aboitiz, F., López, V., & Cosmelli, D. (2017) · Psychophysiology · doi:10.1111/psyp.12894 · Cited by 52 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Murayama, K., Tomiyama, H., Sashikata, K., Kang, M., Ohno, A., Kato, K., Matsuo, A., & Nakao, T. (2026) · Journal of Neuropsychology · doi:10.1111/jnp.70016 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ren, Q., Marshall, A. C., Kaiser, J., & Schütz-Bosbach, S.
- Affiliations
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- Venue
- Biological Psychology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-04
- Volume
- 170
- Pages
- 108323
- ISSN
- 0301-0511 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4221043850
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 1.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Biological Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- China Scholarship Council (202004910347)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Keywords
- response inhibition, interoception, cardiac signals, cardiac systole, heartbeat-evoked potentials, stop-signal task, P300, inhibitory control, attention, autonomic arousal, electrocardiogram
- MeSH terms
- Electroencephalography, Evoked Potentials, Facial Expression, Heart Rate, Humans, Systole, Interoception
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
