Indira García-Cordero, Sol Esteves, Ezequiel P. Mikulan, Eugenia Hesse, Fabricio H. Baglivo, Walter Silva, María del Carmen García, Esteban Vaucheret, Carlos Ciraolo, Hernando S. García, Federico Adolfi, Marcos Pietto, Eduar Herrera, Agustina Legaz, Facundo Manes, Adolfo M. García, Mariano Sigman, Tomás A. Bekinschtein, Agustín Ibáñez, Lucas Sedeño. Attention, in and Out: Scalp-Level and Intracranial EEG Correlates of Interoception and Exteroception. 2017

Indira García-Cordero, Sol Esteves, Ezequiel P. Mikulan, Eugenia Hesse, Fabricio H. Baglivo, Walter Silva, María del Carmen García, Esteban Vaucheret, Carlos Ciraolo, Hernando S. García, Federico Adolfi, Marcos Pietto, Eduar Herrera, Agustina Legaz, Facundo Manes, Adolfo M. García, Mariano Sigman, Tomás A. Bekinschtein, Agustín Ibáñez, Lucas Sedeño. Attention, in and Out: Scalp-Level and Intracranial EEG Correlates of Interoception and Exteroception. 2017

Attention, in and Out: Scalp-Level and Intracranial EEG Correlates of Interoception and Exteroception

 

AUTORES Indira García-Cordero, Sol Esteves, Ezequiel P. Mikulan, Eugenia Hesse, Fabricio H. Baglivo, Walter Silva, María del Carmen García, Esteban Vaucheret, Carlos Ciraolo, Hernando S. García, Federico Adolfi, Marcos Pietto, Eduar Herrera, Agustina Legaz, Facundo Manes, Adolfo M. García, Mariano Sigman, Tomás A. Bekinschtein, Agustín Ibáñez, Lucas Sedeño.
AÑO 2017
JOURNAL Frontiers in Neuroscience
VOLUMEN July 19, 2017
ABSTRACT

Interoception, the monitoring of visceral signals, is often presumed to engage attentional mechanisms specifically devoted to inner bodily sensing. In fact, most standardized interoceptive tasks require directing attention to internal signals. However, most studies in the field have failed to compare attentional modulations between internally- and externally-driven processes, thus probing blind to the specificity of the former. Here we address this issue through a multidimensional approach combining behavioral measures, analyses of event-related potentials and functional connectivity via high-density electroencephalography, and intracranial recordings. In Study 1, 50 healthy volunteers performed a heartbeat detection task as we recorded modulations of the heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP) in three conditions: exteroception, basal interoception (also termed interoceptive accuracy), and post-feedback interoception (sometimes called interoceptive learning). In Study 2, to evaluate whether key interoceptive areas (posterior insula, inferior frontal gyrus, amygdala, and somatosensory cortex) were differentially modulated by externally- and internally-driven processes, we analyzed human intracranial recordings with depth electrodes in these regions. This unique technique provides a very fine grained spatio-temporal resolution compared to other techniques, such as EEG or fMRI. We found that both interoceptive conditions in Study 1 yielded greater HEP amplitudes than the exteroceptive one. In addition, connectivity analysis showed that post-feedback interoception, relative to basal interoception, involved enhanced long-distance connections linking frontal and posterior regions. Moreover, results from Study 2 showed a differentiation between oscillations during basal interoception (broadband: 35–110 Hz) and exteroception (1–35 Hz) in the insula, the amygdala, the somatosensory cortex, and the inferior frontal gyrus. In sum, this work provides convergent evidence for the specificity and dynamics of attentional mechanisms involved in interoception.

RESUMEN La interocepción (o monitoreo de señales viscerales) parece depender de mecanismos atencionales. En dos estudios con electroencefalografía y registros intracraneales directos en humanos, mostramos que las señales cerebrales cardíacas son específicamente sensibles a la atención interna; y que la ínsula, la amígdala, la corteza somatosensorial y el giro frontal inferior discriminan selectivamente la atención interna en relación a la externa; proporcionando evidencia convergente de especificidad y dinámica de los mecanismos atencionales de la interocepción.
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