Body awareness
Insular–cingulate interoception
Also searched as Insular–cingulate interoception.
In depth
An emerging construct: sensing the internal state of the body — heartbeat, breath, gut. Cingulate and insula. Proposed as the bridge between bodily signals and judgments of confidence.
What drives it
Gut-brain signal increases it.
Vagal and spinal visceral afferents supply the ascending signal relayed to insular cortex and experienced as interoception. doi 10.1002/hbm.25288 · PMC7927286
Memory & focus increases it.
Interoception is a measured subdomain of the cognition domain. doi 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.12.037 · PMC11645458
What it drives
It increases Self-knowledge.
Verbatim: 'dorsolateral and anterior prefrontal cortical subregions interact with interoceptive cortices (cingulate and insula) to promote metacognitive accuracy' (PMC3318765, 10.1098/rstb.2011.0417, PMC11962349). Tier: human evidence synthesis. human cortical substrates of metacognitive accuracy across fMRI, TMS and neuropsychology. Stops: the claim is that interoceptive cortices participate in a prefrontal-inte. doi 10.1098/rstb.2011.0417 · PMC3318765
It increases Decision making.
Verbatim: 'People with greater sensitivity to interoceptive signals, as measured by, for example, tests of heart beat detection, perform better in laboratory studies of risky decision-making.' (PMC5027524). What was measured: In the quoted sentence: performance in laboratory studies of risky decision-making (heartbeat-detection sensitivity as the interoception measure). PMC5027524
It increases Memory & focus.
Verbatim: 'Insular patients were less sensitive to sooner rewards than were the control groups, exhibiting reduced TD. A Voxel-based Lesion-Symptom Mapping (VLSM) analysis confirmed a statistically significant association between insular damage and reduced TD. These results indicate that the insular cortex is crucial for intertemporal choice.' (PMC4709635, PMC9309692). Tier: human lesion studies. insular-damage patients vs lesion controls vs healthy controls; the cognitive endpoint is intertemporal choice (delay discounting) with monetary rewards. Stops: one cognitiv. PMC4709635
Blends that modulate it
Each blend page names this pathway and carries the study behind its claim.
See it on the map
Open the causal map to follow this pathway upstream and downstream, arrow by arrow, each with its study.