Evidence for a large-scale brain system supporting allostasis and interoception in humans
Kleckner et. al (2017) here introduces a system, conceptually similar to the large-scale intrinsic brain system involving senses such as sight and hearing for example, to represent sensations from within the body known as interoception. The group of researchers behind this study also relate this system with the regulating peripheral systems in the body called allostasis. The existence of an intrinsic allostatic/interoceptive system in the brain was evaluated using tract-tracing studies of macaque monkeys, two magnetic resonance imaging samples totalling 550 entries, and a new Embodied Predictive Interoception Coding (EPIC) model. After evaluating another sample of 41, it was proven that individuals with stronger connectivity between system hubs performed better in terms of interoceptive ability. Kleckner et. al (2017) provide new insights for the brain’s functional architecture and claims to have possibly united mental and physical illness. [NPID: interoception, interoceptive awareness, allostasis]
Year: 2017
Reference: Kleckner, I. R., Zhang, J., Touroutoglou, A., Chanes, L., Xia, C., Simmons, W. K., Quigley, K. S., Dickerson, B. C., & Barrett, L. F. (2017). Evidence for a large-scale brain system supporting allostasis and interoception in humans. Nature human behaviour, 1, 0069.
Related Studies
This 2016 study explored the possible association between interoceptive awareness with performance on a hippocampal dependent learning and memory (HDLM) measure in logical memory percent retention, among healthy young adults. Interoceptive awareness was assessed on three tasks: heart rate tracking; water loading and the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness Questionnaire (MAIA). After controlling for potentially […]
Wu et. al (2020) studied the anterior insular cortex (aIC) which integrates interoceptive states and emotional awareness and consequently guides behavioral responses. This experiment on mice demonstrated that the right side aIC CamKII+ (aICCamKII) neurons, when hyperactivated, attenuated food consumption, whereas in the case that they are inhibited feeding increases and the anorexia and weight […]