Physiological and psychological correlates of attention-related body sensations (tingling and warmth)

Abstract

Body sensations play an essential role in the subjective evaluation of our physical health, illness, and healing. They are impacted by peripheral somatic and external processes, but they are also heavily modulated by mental processes, e.g., attention, motor control, and emotion. Body sensations, such as tingling, numbness, pulse, and warmth, can emerge due to simply focusing attention on a body part. It is however an open question, if these sensations are connected with actual peripheral changes or happen "only in the mind." Here, we first tested whether the intensity of such attention-related body sensations is related to autonomic and somatomotor physiological processes and to psychological traits. In this study, attention-related body sensations were not significantly connected to changes in physiology, except warmth sensation, which was linked to decrease in muscle tension. Overall intensity of tingling significantly correlated with body awareness and tendentiously with body-mind practice. This strengthened the hypothesis that attention-related body sensations are more the result of top-down functions, and the connection with peripheral processes is weak. Here, we suggested a novel protocol to examine the effect of manipulating attention on body sensations, which together with our results and discussion can inspire future researches.

Therapeutic Sensations: A New Unifying Concept

“…Abundant literature exists for manual acupuncture [11,20,50,[58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65], while only isolated studies are available for other interventions and exercises. In addition to acupuncture, the following interventions were included in the comparison: transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) [23,61], pulsed focused ultrasound [20], electroacupuncture [61,66], therapeutic touch [57], low-level laser stimulation [3,35], focused bodily attention [37,42], and placebo stimulation with a deactivated laser or topical placebo solution [35,37,65].…”

“…In the former, patients or practitioners use their mind to move vital energy to different places inside their bodies [102][103][104]. In the latter, people report sensations of warmth and tingling, when focusing their attention on certain parts of their bodies [37,[40][41][42]. Further support for this hypothesis comes from the quote of a meditator [6], who quite naturally equates the "flow of energy" she is directing through her body with the sensation of "a subtle tingling."…”

“…In the former, patients or practitioners use their mind to move vital energy to different places inside their bodies [ 102 – 104 ]. In the latter, people report sensations of warmth and tingling, when focusing their attention on certain parts of their bodies [ 37 , 40 – 42 ]. Further support for this hypothesis comes from the quote of a meditator [ 6 ], who quite naturally equates the “flow of energy” she is directing through her body with the sensation of “a subtle tingling.” Thus, a vitalist and a rationalist may be describing the same experience, when the former speaks of directing vital energy through the body, while the latter reports a tingling sensation when focusing on a particular body region.…”

“…Similar sensations exist outside the realm of therapy or exercise. They include attention-related sensations [ 37 , 40 – 42 ] that arise during self-focused bodily attention, chills or frisson [ 43 , 44 ], a goose bumps type of skin sensation often triggered by emotional music, and the so-called autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), a tingling, static-like sensation across the scalp and the back of the neck [ 45 , 46 ]. At the end of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant coined the term vital sensations (Vitalempfindungen) for such body experiences at the border between psyche and soma and described them very vividly: “The sensation of warmth and cold, including the sensation aroused by the mind (e.g., through quickly rising hope or fear), belong to the vital sense.…”

Feeling Oneself Requires Embodiment: Insights From the Relationship Between Own-Body Transformations, Schizotypal Personality Traits, and Spontaneous Bodily Sensations

“…The spontaneous nature of these phenomena does not allow for experimental manipulation at will. However, over the past 15 years, several researchers have used subjective reports to assess SPS under controlled conditions [e.g., (Naveteur et al, 2005;Michael and Naveteur, 2011;Bauer et al, 2014a;Tihanyi and Köteles, 2017)].…”