The role of interoception in cognition, and its application to autism spectrum disorders

Traditionally a distinction was drawn between cognitive and sensorimotor processes, with little consideration of communication between the two. However, many findings are incompatible with this separation (e.g. Lebedev & Wise, 2002; Patel, Fleming & Kilner, 2012). One particular domain where this is evidenced is interoception. Interoception has been defined as the sensing of the physiological condition of the body (Craig, 2002). While it has long been clear that interoception is of fundamental importance for homeostasis, it is increasingly being recognised as integral for multiple domains of cognition, including emotion. For example, those with greater access to their interoceptive states experience emotions more intensely (e.g. Wiens, Mezzacappa, & Katkin, 2000). These findings bare on our understanding of autism. For some time, exteroceptive sensory abnormalities has been recognised in autism, with such symptoms now included in the diagnostic criteria. Far less research has considered how interoception is implicated in autism. The reports of autistic people and their caregivers, in addition to a few empirical investigations, suggest that interoceptive processing is altered in autism. It is therefore possible that these interoceptive alterations are implicated in the cognitive symptoms of autism. In this PhD I conducted a series of experiments to test the hypothesis that afferent signals from the body, including interoceptive sensations, are involved in cognition, and that the processing of these signals is altered in autism. More specifically, I tested the role of bodily afferents in metacognition, movement, anxiety, and emotion. I also sought to determine if there are interoceptive differences in the three domains of interoception delineated by Garfinkel and colleagues (Garfinkel & Critchley, 2013; Garfinkel, Seth, Barrett, Suzuki, & Critchley, 2015) in autistic children and adolescents, having previously only been evaluated previously in autistic adults. Finally, I investigated whether differences in emotion processing in autism were related to interoception

The Confidence Database

Understanding how people rate their confidence is critical for the characterization of a wide range of perceptual, memory, motor and cognitive processes. To enable the continued exploration of these processes, we created a large database of confidence studies spanning a broad set of paradigms, participant populations and fields of study. The data from each study are structured in a common, easy-to-use format that can be easily imported and analysed using multiple software packages. Each dataset is accompanied by an explanation regarding the nature of the collected data. At the time of publication, the Confidence Database (which is available at https://osf.io/s46pr/) contained 145 datasets with data from more than 8,700 participants and almost 4 million trials. The database will remain open for new submissions indefinitely and is expected to continue to grow. Here we show the usefulness of this large collection of datasets in four different analyses that provide precise estimations of several foundational confidence-related effects

Specific capture and whole-genome sequencing of viruses from clinical samples.

Whole genome sequencing of viruses directly from clinical samples is integral for understanding the genetics of host-virus interactions. Here, we report the use of sample sparing target enrichment (by hybridisation) for viral nucleic acid separation and deep-sequencing of herpesvirus genomes directly from a range of clinical samples including saliva, blood, virus vesicles, cerebrospinal fluid, and tumour cell lines. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method by deep-sequencing 13 highly cell-associated human herpesvirus genomes and generating full length genome alignments at high read depth. Moreover, we show the specificity of the method enables the study of viral population structures and their diversity within a range of clinical samples types

Left lateral occipito-temporal cortex encodes compatibility between hands and tools: an fMRI adaptation study

Previous work has demonstrated that a region of the extrastriate visual cortex, the left lateral occipito-temporal cortex, contains a region that is activated by both images of human hands and manual tools. The current paper examined the functional significance of this observation. A functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) adaptation paradigm was used to investigate the hypothesis that this region is selective for the functional compatibility of hands and tools. The present results suggest that this region is indeed involved in matching compatible hands postures with tools for their skilled and effective use, with significant adaptation with successive presentation of compatible hands and tools. It is proposed that this region of the extrastriate visual cortex represents a crucial node within a much wider cortical network that supports skilled tool use in humans. The present results are discussed in terms of their implication for our understanding of the organization of the visual brain

Left lateral occipito-temporal cortex encodes compatibility between hands and tools: an fMRI adaptation study

Previous work has demonstrated that a region of the extrastriate visual cortex, the left lateral occipito-temporal cortex, contains a region that is activated by both images of human hands and manual tools. The current paper examined the functional significance of this observation. A functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) adaptation paradigm was used to investigate the hypothesis that this region is selective for the functional compatibility of hands and tools. The present results suggest that this region is indeed involved in matching compatible hands postures with tools for their skilled and effective use, with significant adaptation with successive presentation of compatible hands and tools. It is proposed that this region of the extrastriate visual cortex represents a crucial node within a much wider cortical network that supports skilled tool use in humans. The present results are discussed in terms of their implication for our understanding of the organization of the visual brain

Neural Processing and Production of Gesture in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate impairments in non-verbal communication, including gesturing and imitation deficits. Reduced sensitivity to biological motion (BM) in ASD may impair processing of dynamic social cues like gestures, which in turn may impede encoding and subsequent performance of these actions. Using both an fMRI task involving observation of action gestures and a charade style paradigm assessing gesture performance, this study examined the brain-behavior relationships between neural activity during gesture processing, gesturing abilities and social symptomology in a group of children and adolescents with and without ASD. Compared to typically developing (TD) controls, participants with ASD showed atypical sensitivity to movement in right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), a region implicated in action processing, and had poorer overall gesture performance with specific deficits in hand posture. The TD group showed associations between neural activity, gesture performance and social skills, that were weak or non-significant in the ASD group. These findings suggest that those with ASD demonstrate abnormalities in both processing and production of gestures and may reflect dysfunction in the mechanism underlying perception-action coupling resulting in atypical development of social and communicative skills

Alexithymia mediates the relationship between interoceptive sensibility and anxiety.

A number of empirical and theoretical reports link altered interoceptive processing to anxiety. However, the mechanistic understanding of the relationship between the two remains poor. We propose that a heightened sensibility for interoceptive signals, combined with a difficulty in attributing these sensations to emotions, increases an individual's vulnerability to anxiety. In order to investigate this, a large sample of general population adults were recruited and completed self-report measures of interoceptive sensibility, trait anxiety and alexithymia. Results confirmed that the positive association between interoceptive sensibility and trait anxiety was partially mediated by alexithymia, such that those most at risk for clinically significant levels of trait anxiety have both significantly higher levels of interoceptive sensibility and alexithymia. A subsequent factor analysis confirmed the independence of the three measures. Altered interoceptive processing in combination with alexithymia, increased the risk for anxiety above and beyond altered interoceptive processing alone. We suggest that a heightened sensibility for interoceptive signals, combined with a difficulty in attributing these sensations to emotions, leaves these sensations vulnerable to catastrophizing interpretation. Interventions that target the attribution of bodily sensations may prove valuable in reducing anxiety

Elevated unanticipated acoustic startle reactivity in dyslexia

People with dyslexia, a neurodevelopmental disorder of reading, are highly attuned to the emotional world. Compared to their typically developing peers, children with dyslexia exhibit greater autonomic nervous system reactivity and facial behavior to emotion- and empathy-inducing film clips. Affective symptoms, such as anxiety, are also more common in children with dyslexia than in those without. Here, we investigated whether the startle response, an automatic reaction that lies at the interface of emotion and reflex, is elevated in dyslexia. We measured facial behavior, electrodermal reactivity (a sympathetic nervous system measure), and emotional experience in response to a 100 ms, 105 dB unanticipated acoustic startle task in 30 children with dyslexia and 20 comparison children without dyslexia (aged 7-13) who were matched on age, sex, and nonverbal reasoning. Our results indicated that the children with dyslexia had greater total facial behavior and electrodermal reactivity to the acoustic startle task than the children without dyslexia. Across the sample, greater electrodermal reactivity during the startle predicted greater parent-reported anxiety symptoms. These findings contribute to an emerging picture of heightened emotional reactivity in dyslexia and suggest accentuated sympathetic nervous system reactivity may contribute to the elevated anxiety that is often seen in this population