Affective interoceptive inference: Evidence from heart-beat evoked brain potentials

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Affective Science

Background:

• Interoception, the perception of internal bodily signals, is crucial for emotion and embodied cognition.
• Current theories propose interoception relies on top-down predictions (interoceptive inference).
• The heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP) is a key neural marker for cardiac interoception.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how predictions about emotional stimuli affect neural responses to heartbeats.
• To examine the role of affective predictions in modulating cardiac interoception.
• To explore the influence of stimulus valence and repetition probability on interoceptive processing.

Main Methods:

• Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to record neural activity.
• A modified stimulus repetition task presented facial expressions with varying emotional content and repetition likelihood.
• Heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEP) were analyzed in response to expected and unexpected emotional stimuli.

Main Results:

• Affective predictions modulated the heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP).
• Expected negative facial expressions significantly decreased HEP amplitude compared to expected neutral faces.
• Repetition effects on affective predictions were influenced by stimulus repetition probability.

Conclusions:

• Valence-specific affective predictions, linked to predicted bodily states, can alter cardiac interoceptive responses.
• Top-down predictions about external emotional information significantly influence interoception.
• These findings support models where predicted bodily states modulate sensory processing and external information perception.