title: Can you feel the body that you see? On the relationship between interoceptive accuracy and body image.
abstract: Interoception and exteroception for body signals are two different ways of perceiving the self: the first from within, the second from outside. We investigated the relationship between Interoceptive Accuracy (IAcc) and external perception of the body and we tested if seeing the body from an external perspective can affect IAcc. Fifty-two healthy female subjects performed a standard heartbeat perception task to assess the IAcc, before and after the Body Image Revealer (BIR), which is a body perception task designed to assess the different aspects of body-image. The performance of the lower IAcc group in the heartbeat perception task significantly improved after the exteroceptive task. These findings highlight the relations between interoceptive and exteroceptive body-representations, supporting the view that these two kinds of awareness are linked and interact with each other.
authors.affiliation: Lab of Action & Body, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, TW20 0EX Egham, Surrey, UK. Electronic address: giorgia.zamariola@uclouvain.be.
authors.forename: Giorgia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zamariola
authors.affiliation: Lab of Action & Body, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, TW20 0EX Egham, Surrey, UK.
authors.forename: Flavia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cardini
authors.affiliation: Interdisciplinary Center for Obesity and Bariatrics (C.I.B.O.), Istituti Clinici Zucchi, via Zucchi 24, 20052 Monza, Italy; Emotifood Body Image & Eating Disorders Unit, via Palestro, 12, 20900 Monza, Italy.
authors.forename: Emanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mian
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Center for Neuroprosthetics, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Campus Biotech, CH-1202 Genève, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Serino
authors.affiliation: Lab of Action & Body, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, TW20 0EX Egham, Surrey, UK.
authors.forename: Manos
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tsakiris
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D065812:Interoception / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Body image; Body-awareness; Interoception; Interoceptive accuracy; Interoceptive awareness; Self-awareness