Interoception

Interoception is the perception of the body’s internal physiological state — the receiving, encoding, neural representation, and conscious perception of internal bodily signals (Ceunen et al., 2016). Often called the “eighth sense,” it spans non-conscious signals (heart rate, respiration, gastric distension, gut-brain afferent traffic) and the conscious sensations arising from them (hunger, thirst, satiety, nausea, somatic emotion), is anchored in the anterior insular cortex and vagal pathways, and its conscious dimension — Interoceptive Awareness (IA) — is measurable, individually variable, and trainable through mindfulness (CNP – Interoception and the Vagus Nerve).

In nutritional psychology, it is one of the six core relationship elements and the construct underlying the Diet-Interoceptive Relationship (DIR), which links diet, eating behavior, and mental health.