title: Interoceptive awareness, positive affect, and decision making in major depressive disorder.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Little work has examined the relation between interoceptive awareness and symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Existing research suggests that depressed individuals exhibit impaired heartbeat perception, though the results of this research have been equivocal. Importantly, depressed participants in these studies have had comorbid anxiety disorders, making it difficult to draw inferences about interoceptive awareness in MDD. The current study addresses this issue by assessing heartbeat perception in depressed women without current anxiety disorders and exploring the relation between interoception and perturbations in both affective intensity and decision making, components of MDD postulated to be related to bodily awareness.
  
  
  METHODS
  Depressed women without concurrent anxiety disorders (n=25) and never-disordered controls (n=36) performed a heartbeat perception task. Participants completed the self-report Affect Intensity Measure (AIM), and decision-making difficulty was assessed in MDD participants using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Depressed women exhibited poorer heartbeat perception accuracy than did control participants. Impaired accuracy in MDD participants was associated with reduced positive affectivity and difficulty in decision making.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our sample was composed exclusively of females and was heterogeneous with respect to treatment status, thereby limiting our ability to generalize results to depressed males and to exclude the contribution of exogenous factors to the observed group differences.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Results of this study suggest that for depressed individuals without anxiety comorbidities, disrupted perception of bodily responses reduces both the experience of positive arousal and the ability to use interoceptive feedback to inform decision making.
authors: Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Jordan Hall, Building 420, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. Electronic address: dfurman@stanford.edu.
authors: Daniella J
authors: DJ
authors: Furman
authors: Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, 1834 Wake Forest Road, Winston-Salem, NC 27106, USA.
authors: Christian E
authors: CE
authors: Waugh
authors: Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, 1834 Wake Forest Road, Winston-Salem, NC 27106, USA.
authors: Kalpa
authors: K
authors: Bhattacharjee
authors: Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Jordan Hall, Building 420, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
authors: Renee J
authors: RJ
authors: Thompson
authors: Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Jordan Hall, Building 420, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
authors: Ian H
authors: IH
authors: Gotlib
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology; D003657:Decision Making; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010465:Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Affect; Decision making; Depression; Interoception
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