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The Body Across Adulthood: On the Relation Between Interoception and Body Representations
Simona Raimo1, Maddalena Boccia2,3, Antonella Di Vita2,3
1Department of Psychology, University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Caserta, Italy.
Frontiers in Neuroscience
|March 15, 2021
Summary
Older adults show declines in body schema and structural representation. Higher interoceptive sensibility (IS) in older age is linked to poorer body schema performance, suggesting reduced plasticity.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
- Gerontology
Background:
- Interoceptive information is crucial for body representations (BR).
- The relationship between interoception and various BR types across adulthood is under-explored.
- Aging impacts cognitive functions and potentially BR.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between body representations (BR) and interoceptive sensibility (IS) across different adult age groups.
- To examine how aging affects different types of BR: body schema, body structural representation, and body semantics.
- To explore the potential link between IS and BR performance in older adults.
Main Methods:
- 137 healthy adults (18-40, 41-60, >60 years) assessed for IS using the Self-Awareness Questionnaire (SAQ).
- BR evaluated using the Hand Laterality Task (body schema), Frontal Body Evocation (FBE) task (body structural representation), and Object-Body Part Association Task (body semantics).
- Control tasks with non-body stimuli were included.
Main Results:
- Older adults (>60) demonstrated reduced performance in body schema and body structural representation tasks compared to younger groups.
- Poorer body schema performance in older adults correlated significantly with higher IS.
- This suggests that increased awareness of internal body sensations may reduce the adaptability of the body schema with age.
Conclusions:
- Aging is associated with declines in specific aspects of body representation, namely body schema and structural representation.
- A heightened interoceptive sensibility in older individuals may negatively impact body schema flexibility.
- Findings align with neuropsychological models of BR development and the effects of aging on neural plasticity.
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