BMC Neurology is now welcoming submissions to a new Collection focused on the field of interoception, exploring its implications for brain-body interactions, emotional regulation, symptom improvement and management, and various neurological, neurodegenerative, and psychiatric disorders. We welcome submissions that investigate interoception in clinical care as well as the neural mechanisms underlying interoception in both health and disease, its role in chronic pain and stress, and its potential for informing therapeutic interventions.
Interoception, the sense of internal bodily states, plays a crucial role in how we perceive and respond to our environment. It encompasses the brain-body interactions that inform us about physiological conditions such as hunger, thirst, pain, and emotional states. Recent research has highlighted the significance of interoceptive awareness in various neurological, neurodegenerative, and psychiatric disorders, including chronic pain, substance use disorder, anxiety, depression, and dementia. Understanding interoception is essential for unraveling the complexities of human behavior and emotional regulation, as it serves as a bridge between physiological processes and psychological experiences. Important advances in this field have included the identification of neural circuits involved in interoceptive processing and the exploration of predictive coding and active inference models that explain how the brain interprets and predicts bodily signals. These insights have the potential to inform therapeutic approaches that enhance emotion regulation and improve overall mental health and can offer a synergistic approach when considering the continuum of brain health and disease.
Continued research in interoception may lead to discoveries regarding the interplay between bodily sensations and cognitive processes. Future studies could uncover novel biomarkers for psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative diseases, enhance our understanding of stress responses, and inform personalized treatment strategies that target specific interoceptive deficits. As we deepen our knowledge of interoception, we may also develop innovative tools for improving homeostasis and emotional well-being.
Topics of interest to this Collection include, but are not limited to:
- Neural circuits involved in interoception
- Computational modeling of interoception
- Interoception and chronic pain
- Interoception and affective states and emotion regulation
- Interoception and cognition
- Interoception in neurodevelopmental disorders
- Interoception in neurodegenerative diseases
- Interoception in psychiatric disorders
- Predictive coding and active inference in interoception
- Modulation of interoceptive signals
- Interoceptive training processes to enhance wellbeing in clinical care
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