Il giorno 17 novembre alle ore 14 presso la meeting room il dott. Marcello Costantini (Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti) e la dott.ssa Francesca Ferri (Department of Psychological, Health ad Territorial Sciences, “G. d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti) terranno il seminario dal titolo: "Interoceptive influences on multisensory integration and body representation".

ingresso libero

info: viviana.betti@uniroma1.it

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ABSTRACT

The self has been largely proposed to be grounded in the monitoring of internal bodily signals.
Research has shown that, for example, the subjective experiences of both the malleability and the space of the bodily self are associated to cardiac interoceptive accuracy. So far, the impact of internal bodily signals on the self has mostly focused on cardiac processes. In particular, a primary role has been assigned to the brain activity locked to heartbeats, which changes when an individual is focused on oneself or internal signals, compared to external inputs. This is not the whole story though. Indeed, the cardiac system is intimately linked to the respiratory system. However, such a link has been scantly investigated so far. We recently revealed the role of respiration in fine-tuning brain-heart interactions, and how this relates to interoception and the bodily self. Furthermore, despite it is widely recognized that the representation of the bodily self is grounded in multisensory integration mechanisms, direct investigations of whether and how interoceptive signals impact on such mechanisms are still wanted.  We performed a series of studies to fill this gap in the literature showing both cardiac-phase-related “interference” on and respiratory phase-related “modulations” of the integration of exteroceptive sensory signals.
Overall, our studies reveal that a balance between interoception and exteroception is pivotal for bodily self. Furthermore, we suggest that respiration has a role to play in fine-tuning this balance.