Bodily maps of exercise-induced sensations

Abstract

Physical exercise is a strong physiological and mechanical stimulus that elicits various bodily sensations. They shape the affective experience and in turn contribute to the psychological benefits of exercise. Despite the centrality of interoception and somatosensation in generating subjective sensations and the capacity for physical exercise in altering the bodily states, there is a paucity of data on bodily experiences and sensations evoked by physical exercise. Here we mapped bodily sensations evoked by exercise in two studies. In the first proof-of-concept study we asked participants (n=305; 143 females) to imagine undergoing aerobic or strength training and report the expected bodily sensations. In the second field study we mapped participants' (n=133; 105 females) emotions and bodily sensations before and after actual exercise sessions. Both studies utilised visual analogue scales for sensation rating and a topographical self-report tool for mapping bodily sensations: participants were asked to colour on a human body silhouette all the bodily regions where each specified sensation (e.g. “Energized”) was felt. The findings revealed a wide array of mostly positive exercise-induced bodily sensations with distinct topographies, consistent across individuals. The field experiment confirmed that bodily sensations of activity and exhaustion intensified following exercise in topographically specific manner, and that experience of exhaustion in the body mapping was linearly associated with physiological and subjective indices of exertion. Altogether these results show that different exercise-induced sensations have distinct bodily topographies, suggesting that the exercise-induced emotions may arise from the interoceptive and somatosensory pathways.