Art reception as an interoceptive embodied predictive experience

In the Distancing-Embracing model, an explanation is proposed for the apparent paradox that is the enjoyment of negative emotional states in art reception. Here, we argue for the advantages of grounding the psychological dynamics described in the model in established and empirically testable frameworks of brain functioning by thinking of art reception as an embodied experience guided by predictive coding

Epistasis between 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B polymorphisms influences attentional bias for emotional information in healthy volunteers

Individual differences in emotional processing are likely to contribute to vulnerability and resilience to emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety. Genetic variation is known to contribute to these differences but they remain incompletely understood. The serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and alpha(2B)-adrenergic autoreceptor (ADRA2B) insertion/deletion polymorphisms impact on two separate but interacting monaminergic signalling mechanisms that have been implicated in both emotional processing and emotional disorders. Recent studies suggest that the 5-HTTLPR s allele is associated with a negative attentional bias and an increased risk of emotional disorders. However, such complex behavioural traits are likely to exhibit polygenicity, including epistasis. This study examined the contribution of the 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B insertion/deletion polymorphisms to attentional biases for aversive information in 94 healthy male volunteers and found evidence of a significant epistatic effect (p < 0.001). Specifically, in the presence of the 5-HTTLPR s allele, the attentional bias for aversive information was attenuated by possession of the ADRA2B deletion variant whereas in the absence of the s allele, the bias was enhanced. These data identify a cognitive mechanism linking genotype-dependent serotonergic and noradrenergic signalling that is likely to have implications for the development of cognitive markers for depression/anxiety as well as therapeutic drug effects and personalized approaches to treatment

Participants’ above-chance recognition of own-heart sound combined with poor metacognitive awareness suggests implicit knowledge of own heart cardiodynamics

Mounting evidence suggests that interoceptive signals are fundamentally important for the experience of the self. Thus far, studies on interoception have mainly focused on the ability to monitor the timing of ongoing heartbeats and on how these influence emotional and self-related processes. However, cardiac afferent signalling is not confined to heartbeat timing and several other cardiac parameters characterize cardiodynamic functioning. Building on the fact that each heart has its own self-specific cardio-dynamics, which cannot be expressed uniquely by heart rate, we devised a novel task to test whether people could recognize the sound of their own heart even when perceived offline and thus not in synchrony with ongoing heartbeats. In a forced-choice paradigm, participants discriminated between sounds of their own heartbeat (previously recorded with a Doppler device) versus another person’s heart. Participants identified the sound of their own heart above chance, whereas their metacognition of performance – as calculated by contrasting performance against ratings of confidence - was considerably poorer. These results suggest an implicit access to fine-grained neural representations of elementary cardio-dynamic parameters beyond heartbeat timing

Emotion matters: Different psychophysiological responses to expressive and non-expressive full-body movements

We explore dance video clip stimuli as a means to test human observers' accuracy in detecting genuine emotional expressivity in full-body movements. Stimuli of every-day-type full-body expressions of emotions usually use culturally very recognizable actions (e.g. fist shaking for anger, etc). However, expressive dance movement stimuli can be created to contain fully abstract movements. The expressivity results from subtle variations in the body movements of the expressor, and emotions cannot be recognised by observers via particular actions (e.g. fist shaking, etc). Forty-one participants watched and rated 24 pairs of short dance videos –from a published normalised dance stimuli library– in randomised order (N = 48). Of each carefully matched pair, one version of the full-body movement sequence had been danced to be emotionally genuinely expressive (clip a), while the other version of the same sequence (clip b) had been danced –while technically correct– without any emotional expressivity. Participants rated (i) expressivity (to test their accuracy; block 1), and (ii) how much they liked each movement (an implicit measure to test their emotional response (“liking”); block 2). Participants rated clips that were intended to be expressive as more expressive (part 1: expressivity ratings), and liked those expressive clips more than the non-expressive clips (part 2: liking ratings). Besides, their galvanic skin response differed, depending on the category of clips they were watching (expressive vs. non-expressive), and this relationship was modulated by interceptive accuracy and arts experience. Results are discussed in relation to the Body Precision Hypothesis and the Hypothesis of Constructed Emotion

From the viscera to first impressions: Phase dependent cardio-visual signals bias the perceived trustworthiness of faces

When we see new people, we rapidly form first impressions. Whereas past research has focused on the role of morphological or emotional cues, we asked whether transient visceral states bias the impressions we form. Across three studies (N = 94 university students), we investigated how fluctuations of bodily states, driven by the interoceptive impact of cardiac signals, influence the perceived trustworthiness of faces. Participants less often chose faces presented in synchrony with their own cardiac systole as more trustworthy than faces presented out of synchrony. Participants also explicitly judged faces presented in synchrony with their cardiac systole as less trustworthy. Finally, the presentation of faces in synchrony with participants’ cardiac diastole did not modulate participants’ perceptions of the faces’ trustworthiness, suggesting that the systolic phase is necessary for such interoceptive effects. These findings highlight the role of phasic interoceptive information in the processing of social information and provide a mechanistic account of the role of visceroception for social perception

Neural divergence and convergence for attention to and detection of interoceptive and somatosensory stimuli

Body awareness is constructed by signals originating from within and outside the body. How do these apparently divergent signals converge? We developed a signal detection task to study the neural convergence and divergence of interoceptive and somatosensory signals. Participants focused on either cardiac or tactile events and reported their presence or absence. Beyond some evidence of divergence, we observed a robust overlap in the pattern of activation evoked across both conditions in frontal areas including the insular cortex, as well as parietal and occipital areas, and for both attention and detection of these signals. Psycho-physiological interaction analysis revealed that right insular cortex connectivity was modulated by the conscious detection of cardiac compared to somatosensory sensations, with greater connectivity to occipito-parietal regions when attending to cardiac signals. Our findings speak in favour of the inherent convergence of bodily-related signals and move beyond the apparent antagonism between exteroception and interoception

Seeing myself through my heart: Cortical processing of a single heartbeat speeds up self-face recognition

Recent research has highlighted the contribution of interoceptive signals to different aspects of bodily self-consciousness (BSC) by means of the cardio-visual stimulation - i.e. perceiving a pulsing stimulus in synchrony with one’s own heart. Here, for the first time, we investigate the effects of individual heartbeats on a critical feature of BSC, namely the recognition of one’s own face. Across two studies, we explored the cardiac-timing effects on a classic self-face recognition task. In Study 1, participants saw morphed faces that contained different percentages of the self-face and that of another unfamiliar individual. Study 2 used a similar design, albeit participants saw morphed faces of the self-face and that of a familiar other to provide a better control of self-familiarity. Results from both studies consistently revealed that the cortical processing of cardiac afferent signals conveyed by the firing of arterial baroreceptors affects the speed, but not the accuracy, of self-face recognition, when a single picture is presented during cardiac systole, as compared to diastole. This effect is stronger and more stable for stimuli with more self-cues than other-cues and for ‘ambiguous’ stimuli – i.e. at the individual point of subjective equality. Results from Study 2 also revealed that cardiac effects on the speed of self-face recognition cannot be explained simply on the basis of the imbalanced familiarity between the self’s and other’s faces used. The present findings highlight the interoceptive contributions to self-recognition and may be expand our understanding of pathological disturbances of self-experience

Heartfelt Self: Cardio-Visual Integration Affects Self-Face Recognition and Interoceptive Cortical Processing

The sense of body-ownership relies on the representation of both interoceptive and exteroceptive signals coming from one's body. However, it remains unknown how the integration of bodily signals coming from “outside” and “inside” the body is instantiated in the brain. Here, we used a modified version of the Enfacement Illusion to investigate whether the integration of visual and cardiac information can alter self-face recognition (Experiment 1) and neural responses to heartbeats (Experiment 2). We projected a pulsing shade, that was synchronous or asynchronous with the participant's heartbeat, onto a picture depicting the participant's face morphed with the face of an unfamiliar other. Results revealed that synchronous (vs. asynchronous) cardio-visual stimulation led to increased self-identification with the other's face (Experiment 1), while during stimulation, synchronicity modulated the amplitude of the Heartbeat Evoked Potential, an electrophysiological index of cortical interoceptive processing (Experiment 2). Importantly, the magnitude of the illusion-related effects was dependent on, and increased linearly, with the participants’ Interoceptive Accuracy. These results provide the first direct neural evidence for the integration of interoceptive and exteroceptive signals in bodily self-awareness

When the lens is too wide: The political consequences of the visual dehumanization of refugees

Photojournalistic images shape our understanding of sociopolitical events. How humans are depicted in images may have far-reaching consequences for our attitudes towards them. Social psychology has shown how the visualization of an ‘identifiable victim effect’ can elicit empathic responses. However, images of identifiable victims in the media are the exception rather than the norm. In the context of the Syrian refugee crisis, the majority of images in Western media depicted refugees as large unidentifiable groups. While the effects of the visual depiction of single individuals are well-known, the ways in which the visual framing of large groups operates, and its social and political consequences, remain unknown. We here focus on the visual depiction of refugees to understand how exposure to the dominant visual framing used in the media, depicting them in large groups of faceless individuals, affects their dehumanization and sets off political consequences. To that end we brought together insights from social psychology, social sciences and the humanities to test a range of hypotheses using methods from social and political psychology in 10 studies with the participation of 3951 European citizens. Seeing images of large groups resulted in greater implicit dehumanization compared with images depicting refugees in small groups. Images of large groups are also explicitly rated as more dehumanizing, and when coupled with meta-data such as newspaper headlines, images continue to play a significant and independent role on how (de)humanizing we perceive such news coverage to be. Moreover, after viewing images of large groups, participants showed increased preference for more dominant and less trustworthy-looking political leaders and supported fewer pro-refugee policies and more anti-refugee policies. In terms of a mechanistic understanding of these effects, the extent to which participants felt pity for refugees depicted in large groups as opposed to small groups mediated the effect of visual framing on the choice of a more authoritarian-looking leader. What we see in the media and how it is shown not only has consequences for the ways in which we relate to other human beings and our behaviour towards them but, ultimately, for the functioning of our political systems

Epistasis between 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B polymorphisms influences attentional bias for emotional information in healthy volunteers

Individual differences in emotional processing are likely to contribute to vulnerability and resilience to emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety. Genetic variation is known to contribute to these differences but they remain incompletely understood. The serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and α2B-adrenergic autoreceptor (ADRA2B) insertion/deletion polymorphisms impact on two separate but interacting monaminergic signalling mechanisms that have been implicated in both emotional processing and emotional disorders. Recent studies suggest that the 5-HTTLPR s allele is associated with a negative attentional bias and an increased risk of emotional disorders. However, such complex behavioural traits are likely to exhibit polygenicity, including epistasis. This study examined the contribution of the 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B insertion/deletion polymorphisms to attentional biases for aversive information in 94 healthy male volunteers and found evidence of a significant epistatic effect (p<0.001). Specifically, in the presence of the 5-HTTLPR s allele, the attentional bias for aversive information was attenuated by possession of the ADRA2B deletion variant whereas in the absence of the s allele, the bias was enhanced. These data identify a cognitive mechanism linking genotype-dependent serotonergic and noradrenergic signalling that is likely to have implications for the development of cognitive markers for depression/anxiety as well as therapeutic drug effects and personalized approaches to treatment