title: Evidence for Enhanced Interoceptive Accuracy in Professional Musicians.
abstract: Interoception is defined as the perceptual activity involved in the processing of internal bodily signals. While the ability of internal perception is considered a relatively stable trait, recent data suggest that learning to integrate multisensory information can modulate it. Making music is a uniquely rich multisensory experience that has shown to alter motor, sensory, and multimodal representations in the brain of musicians. We hypothesize that musical training also heightens interoceptive accuracy comparable to other perceptual modalities. Thirteen professional singers, twelve string players, and thirteen matched non-musicians were examined using a well-established heartbeat discrimination paradigm complemented by self-reported dispositional traits. Results revealed that both groups of musicians displayed higher interoceptive accuracy than non-musicians, whereas no differences were found between singers and string-players. Regression analyses showed that accumulated musical practice explained about 49% variation in heartbeat perception accuracy in singers but not in string-players. Psychometric data yielded a number of psychologically plausible inter-correlations in musicians related to performance anxiety. However, dispositional traits were not a confounding factor on heartbeat discrimination accuracy. Together, these data provide first evidence indicating that professional musicians show enhanced interoceptive accuracy compared to non-musicians. We argue that musical training largely accounted for this effect.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Katharina L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Schirmer-Mokwa
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Technical University of Dresden Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Pouyan R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Fard
authors.affiliation: Research Institute on Health Sciences, University of Balearic Islands Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
authors.forename: Anna M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Zamorano
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Finkel
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, University of TübingenTübingen, Germany; Ospedale San Camillo, Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere ScientificoVenice, Italy.
authors.forename: Niels
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Birbaumer
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, University of TübingenTübingen, Germany; International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound ResearchMontreal, QC, Canada.
authors.forename: Boris A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Kleber
keywords: heartbeat perception; insula; interoception; multisensory integration; musicians