Modulation of heartbeat-evoked potential and cardiac cycle effect by auditory stimuli

Interoception has been proposed as a factor that influences various psychological processes (Khalsa et al., 2018). Afferent signals from the cardiovascular system vary across cardiac cycle phases. Heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEP) and event-related potentials (ERP) were measured to examine whether interoceptive signals differed between cardiac cycle phases. Simultaneously, participants performed an auditory oddball task in which the timing of the presenting stimulus was synchronized with the heartbeat. Pure tones were presented at 10 ms (late diastole condition), 200 ms (systole condition), or 500 ms after the R wave (diastole condition). Greater HEP amplitudes were observed when the tone was presented during diastole than during systole or late diastole. ERP showed the same tendency: a greater amplitude was observed during diastole than systole or late diastole. These results suggest that the processing of interoception reflected by HEP and exteroception reflected by ERP share attentional resources when both stimuli coincide. When the tone was presented during systole, attention to the internal state decreased compared with when the tone was presented during diastole, and attention was distributed to both exteroception and interoception. Our study suggests that HEP may be considered an indication of a relative amount of resources to process the interoception.