Bodily rhythms in the brain: from bench to bedside

Our brain is continuously engaged in the intricate process of receiving, processing, and inte-grating a wide range of bodily signals. Over the past two decades, there has been extensive interest in cognitive neuroscience focusing on interoceptive signals—those originating inter-nally, especially from the viscera, revealing their significant role in various cognitive func-tions – including body representation – but also to be a potential feature of several neurologi-cal and psychiatric disorders. This Privat Docent thesis presents insights from five of my recent publications, exploring how the brain processes internal bodily signals, how experimental manipulation of multisensory information can be applied in clinical practice, and the potential future applications of these protocols in psychiatric populations. Specifically, it first demonstrates how exteroceptive stimulation, particularly through neuromodulation and virtual reality, can modulate body rep-resentation to alleviate chronic pain (Study 1). It then introduces a theoretical framework on interoceptive processing (Study 2) and examines interoceptive processing at the single-cell level in subcortical regions (Study 3). Finally, expanding on the clinical relevance of intero-ception, it explores how patients with distorted body representation process interoceptive in-formation (Study 4) and shows how multisensory stimulation using interoceptive signals can produce analgesic effects in chronic pain patients (Study 5). Together, these studies illustrate how fundamental neuroscience research can directly inform clinical practice, paving the way for new strategies in pain management and psychiatric treatment.