The effect of psychological stress and relaxation on interoceptive accuracy: Implications for symptom perception

Cold pressor stress affects cardiac attenuation of startle

“…However, the CP test significantly increases subjectively perceived arousal. That finding is in accordance with those of earlier studies that reported higher levels of subjective arousal after stress (Fairclough and Goodwin, 2007). We conclude that CP stress may alter the pattern of baro-afferent neural signal transmission and therefore subjective perception of bodily signals, but not simply amplify the afferent neural feedback from the cardiovascular system.…”

“…The present findings demonstrate that the cardiac modulation of startle and, thus, baro-afferent signal transmission, is altered in acute stress. Moreover, subjective reports of interoceptive sensations are affected by stress (Fairclough and Goodwin, 2007;Schandry and Specht, 1981). That may imply that stress could induce and maintain an altered transmission pattern of baro-afferent neural traffic via the NTS, which may lead to chronic visceral malsensations and contribute to the onset of somatic symptoms.…”

Panic and comorbid depression and their associations with stress reactivity, interoceptive awareness and interoceptive accuracy of various bioparameters

“…Khalsa et al (2008) compared experienced meditators with control subjects and thereby gave an example where the IAw of the meditators (operationalized as their subjective certainty of accurately perceiving bodily sensations) was higher than that of the controls, but the actual IAc was not. Fairclough and Goodwin (2007) found that awareness assessed with the BPQ was inversely related to IAc. Many researchers consider heightened IAw (e.g., De Berardis et al, 2007;Anderson & Hope, 2009, Paulus & Stein, 2010 as basic requirement for the development of panic.…”

Symptoms and the body: Taking the inferential leap

“…Genderrelated differences in symptom appraisal, socialization processes and gender roles, as well as gender biases in research and clinical practices, may also account for some of the effect . However, two additional observations are important in this respect: First, in laboratory environments, women are consistently found to be less accurate than men at detecting physiological changes in, for example, heart rate, blood glucose, blood pressure, respiration, and gastrointestinal sensations (Pennebaker and Roberts, 1992;Roberts and Pennebaker, 1994), which may be due to gender-related structural and functional differences in the interoceptive network in the brain (Naliboff et al, 2003;Fairclough and Goodwin, 2007;Harshaw, 2015). Second, this laboratory difference in interoceptive accuracy disappears in natural environments, which may be related to women being more sensitive to contextual cues when determining their internal state (see Pennebaker and Roberts, 1992;Roberts and Pennebaker, 1994;Pennebaker, 1995).…”