Short‐term food deprivation increases amplitudes of heartbeat‐evoked potentials

Abstract

Nutritional state (i.e., fasting or nonfasting) may affect the processing of interoceptive signals, but mechanisms underlying this effect remain unclear. We investigated 16 healthy women on two separate days: when satiated (standardized food intake) and after an 18-h food deprivation period. On both days, heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEPs) and cardiac and autonomic nervous system activation indices (heart rate, normalized low frequency heart rate variability [nLF HRV]) were assessed. The HEP is an EEG pattern that is considered an index of cortical representation of afferent cardiovascular signals. Average HEP activity (R wave +455-595 ms) was enhanced during food deprivation compared to normal food intake. Cardiac activation did not differ between nutritional conditions. Our results indicate that short-term food deprivation amplifies an electrophysiological correlate of the cortical representation of visceral-afferent signals originating from the cardiovascular system. This effect could not be attributed to increased cardiac activation, as estimated by heart rate and nLF HRV, after food deprivation.

Altered Patterns of Heartbeat-Evoked Potentials in Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder

“…The order was counterbalanced across participants. Although findings from earlier studies suggest no main effect of open versus closed eyes on HEPs (19,47), this design was intended to retest this hypothesis in an a priori fashion. Participants were unaware during this phase that the later experimental task would involve their attention-focus on heartbeats.…”

“…Epochs with nonstereotyped artifacts (e.g., electrode cable movements, swallowing, etc) were excluded from further analysis. As described in previous studies on HEPs (19,22,47,50), eye blink correction was carried out using the Gratton-Coles algorithm (51). EEG analysis was performed with Brain Vision Analyzer 2.0 (Brain Products, Munich, Germany).…”

Interoception and stress

“…As almost all studies in this field are cross-sectional and quasi-experimental in design, it is difficult to come to any conclusions on the direction of this relationship. Beyond clinically relevant eating behavior, the experimental manipulation of eating behavior using short-term food deprivation induces an increase in IA as assessed by heartbeat perception ( Herbert et al, 2012 ) and HEP amplitudes ( Schulz et al, 2015a ). As some neuroendocrinological parameters, such as sympathetic tone or peptide YY output reverse from hyper- to hypo-activation in long-term fasting, one may argue that eating behavior could serve as a coping mechanism to regulate the perception of bodily sensations.…”

Heartbeat counting is unrelated to heartbeat detection: A comparison of methods to quantify interoception

“…Furthermore, it is possible that variations in HEP amplitude that have been attributed to individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity on the basis of the Schandry counting task are actually due to one or more of the many covariates of interoceptive sensitivity that have been reported. For example, individual differences in attentional focus (Babo‐Rebelo, Wolpert, Adam Hasboun, & Tallon‐Baudry, ; Garcia‐Cordero et al, ; Montoya, Schandry, & Muller, ), emotion/stress/arousal (Couto et al, ; Gray et al, ; Luft & Bhattacharya, ; MacKinnon, Gevirtz, McCraty, & Brown, ), and motivation (Schulz et al, ; Weitkunat & Schandry, ) have all been reported to be associated with HEP amplitude. It seems plausible that any or all of these processes may predispose individuals to acquire more or less accurate, albeit indirect, knowledge of their heart rates and thereby to achieve higher or lower scores on the Schandry HBC test.…”