title: Neural correlates of heart-focused interoception: a functional magnetic resonance imaging meta-analysis.
abstract: Interoception is the ability to perceive one's internal body state including visceral sensations. Heart-focused interoception has received particular attention, in part due to a readily available task for behavioural assessment, but also due to accumulating evidence for a significant role in emotional experience, decision-making and clinical disorders such as anxiety and depression. Improved understanding of the underlying neural correlates is important to promote development of anatomical-functional models and suitable intervention strategies. In the present meta-analysis, nine studies reporting neural activity associated with interoceptive attentiveness (i.e. focused attention to a particular interoceptive signal for a given time interval) to one's heartbeat were submitted to a multilevel kernel density analysis. The findings corroborated an extended network associated with heart-focused interoceptive attentiveness including the posterior right and left insula, right claustrum, precentral gyrus and medial frontal gyrus. Right-hemispheric dominance emphasizes non-verbal information processing with the posterior insula presumably serving as the major gateway for cardioception. Prefrontal neural activity may reflect both top-down attention deployment and processing of feed-forward cardioceptive information, possibly orchestrated via the claustrum.This article is part of the themed issue 'Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health'.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology I, University of Würzburg, Marcusstrasse 9-11, 97070 Würzburg, Germany schulz@psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de.|Comprehensive Heart Failure Center Würzburg, University Hospital Würzburg, Straubmühlweg 2a, 97078 Würzburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefan M
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0550-2440
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Schulz
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001364:Awareness; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D065812:Interoception; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D062206:Spatial Analysis
keywords: brain activity; cardioception; functional magnetic resonance imaging; heartbeat detection task; interoception; meta-analysis