Towards a psychophysics of interoceptive processes: the measurement of heartbeat detection

It is difficult to collect objective evidence of interoception. Unlike exteroception, the effective stimuli for interoception are often unknown, and even when identifiable, they are difficult to control experimentally. Furthermore, direct stimulation of the interoceptors is seldom appropriate in hum...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences Vol. 371; no. 1708; p. 20160015
Main Authors Brener, Jasper, Ring, Christopher
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England The Royal Society 19.11.2016
Subjects
Awareness
Heart Rate
Heartbeat Counting
Heartbeat Detection
Humans
Interoception
Interoceptive Sensitivity
Psychophysics
Psychophysics - methods
Review
interoceptive sensitivity
heartbeat detection
psychophysics
heartbeat counting
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Summary:It is difficult to collect objective evidence of interoception. Unlike exteroception, the effective stimuli for interoception are often unknown, and even when identifiable, they are difficult to control experimentally. Furthermore, direct stimulation of the interoceptors is seldom appropriate in human experimentation. Hence, non-invasive behavioural measures of accuracy in heartbeat detection have frequently been adopted to index interoceptive sensitivity. However, there has been little standardization and the two most popular methods for assessing heartbeat detection, heartbeat tracking and two alternative forced choice methods, appear to be biased and of questionable validity. These issues do not arise with other methods that are based on classical psychophysics and that enable subjects to indicate when during the cardiac cycle their heartbeat sensations occur. Not only are these classical methods highly reliable, but they also provide continuous unbiased measures of the temporal locations of heartbeat sensations and the precision with which these sensations are detected. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health’.
Bibliography:Theme issue ‘Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health’ compiled and edited by Manos Tsakiris and Hugo D. Critchley
ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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One contribution of 16 to a theme issue ‘Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health’.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2016.0015