Interoceptive Awareness is Associated with Enhanced Neural Response to Unpleasant Images

Abstract Interoception, or perception of internal bodily signals, is thought to be an important contributor to emotional experience and cognition, and individual differences in interoceptive beliefs may affect cognitive processing of emotional information. Addressing this issue, the present study examined the correlation between self-reported interoceptive awareness and EEG markers of motivated attention to emotional versus neutral images. A sample of undergraduates (n = 115) viewed images of neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant scenes while EEG was recorded, and the late positive potential (LPP) was extracted for each image type. Group results replicate prior findings of enhanced LPP signals for pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral images. Moreover, a greater degree of enhanced LPP for unpleasant images (versus pleasant or neutral images) was positively correlated with self-reported interoceptive awareness. Results support the role of interoceptive beliefs in cortical processing of emotional information.