Embodied Singing: Dual Role of Interoception in Vocal Expertise and Musical Competence

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Music Cognition

Background:

• Musical expertise often correlates with sensory processing, but its link to internal bodily awareness (interoception) is unclear.
• Singing, a complex motor-auditory skill, may rely on precise bodily feedback, yet the role of interoception in vocalists is understudied.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between singing expertise levels and interoceptive ability.
• To determine if interoception can predict musical skills, particularly singing competence.
• To explore potential mediating factors, such as emotional awareness, in the singing-interoception link.

Main Methods:

• Compared interoceptive accuracy (heartbeat discrimination task) and self-reported sensibility across professional singers, amateur singers, and nonsingers.
• Administered comprehensive musical competence assessments.
• Utilized regression and mediation analyses to examine predictive and mediating roles of interoception and practice.

Main Results:

• Professional singers showed significantly higher interoceptive accuracy (IAcc) than amateurs and nonsingers.
• Singing practice moderately predicted IAcc in trained singers, with emotional awareness as a potential partial mediator.
• Higher IAcc in nonsingers correlated with better singing accuracy, suggesting interoception aids musical skill independently of training.

Conclusions:

• Interoception plays a dual role in singing: contributing to expert performance, partly via emotional awareness, and independently facilitating musical competence.
• These findings underscore the embodied nature of singing and suggest innate mechanisms contribute to musicality beyond practice.
• The study reconciles prior research by highlighting the specific link between interoception and vocal expertise.