Interoceptive Processing and Emotional Experience

Interoceptive processing refers to the sensing, integration and interpretation of signals originating within the body, spanning cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and visceral channels. These internal cues are conveyed via afferent pathways to central regions—most notably the insular cortex—where they inform the brain about physiological state. Emotional experience emerges from the dynamic interplay between these bottom-up bodily signals and top-down predictions or appraisals, yielding subjective feelings such as anxiety, joy or fear. Contemporary frameworks view emotions as the outcome of interoceptive inference, in which the brain generates and updates internal models of bodily states. Variations in interoceptive sensitivity and awareness influence emotional regulation, mental health vulnerabilities and responses to interventions ranging from mindfulness to biofeedback. Understanding these processes holds promise for translational applications in psychiatry, personalised well-being strategies and the design of human–machine interfaces that monitor or modulate emotional state.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have demonstrated that precise manipulation of cardiac rhythms can directly modulate emotional behaviour. By implementing noninvasive, cell-type-specific control of heart rate in freely moving animal models, researchers showed that artificially increased heartbeats amplify anxiety-like responses in risk contexts, implicating the posterior insular cortex as a critical node for bottom-up cardiac interoception. Complementary human electrophysiology work employed a minimally invasive vibrating capsule to probe gut mechanosensation, revealing late parieto-occipital neural responses whose amplitude scaled with perceptual accuracy. These findings characterise gastric evoked potentials and underscore a dedicated enteric monitoring system within the cortex, advancing our mechanistic understanding of how visceral signals shape emotional awareness.

Interoceptive Processing and Emotional Experience publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in interoceptive processing and emotional experience across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Interoception: The process by which the nervous system senses, integrates and interprets internal bodily signals to inform the brain about physiological state.

Interoceptive awareness: The conscious perception and appraisal of internal bodily sensations, encompassing multiple dimensions such as noticing, regulation and trust in bodily cues.

Posterior insular cortex: A region of the cerebral cortex implicated in receiving and processing afferent interoceptive information from visceral organs.

Gastric evoked potentials: Neurophysiological responses recorded at the scalp following mechanical stimulation of the stomach, reflecting cortical processing of gut sensations.

Predictive coding: A theoretical framework in which the brain continuously generates and updates models (predictions) of incoming sensory information, minimising discrepancies (prediction errors) between expected and actual signals.

References

1. Cardiogenic control of affective behavioural state. Nature (2023).
2. Parieto-occipital ERP indicators of gut mechanosensation in humans. Nature Communications (2023).
3. The Emerging Science of Interoception: Sensing, Integrating, Interpreting, and Regulating Signals within the Self. Trends in Neurosciences (2021).
4. Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2013).
5. Differential changes in self-reported aspects of interoceptive awareness through 3 months of contemplative training. Frontiers in Psychology (2015).
6. Can Interoception Improve the Pragmatic Search for Biomarkers in Psychiatry?. Frontiers in Psychiatry (2016).