The New Measures of Interoceptive Accuracy: A Systematic Review and Assessment


Author: Olivier Desmedt1, Olivier Luminet2, Marta Walentynowicz3, Olivier Corneille4

Affiliation: <sup>1</sup> Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. Electronic address: olivier.desmedt@unil.ch.

<sup>2</sup> Psychological Science Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; Fund for Scientific Research - Belgium (FRS-FNRS).

<sup>3</sup> Centre for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology, KULeuven, Belgium.

<sup>4</sup> Psychological Science Research Institute, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
Conference/Journal: Neurosci Biobehav Rev
Date published: 2023 Sep 12
Other:
  Special Notes: doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105388.   ,  Word Count: 158  
    Conscious interoception, the perception of internal bodily states, is thought to contribute to fundamental human abilities (e.g., decision-making and emotional regulation). One of its most studied dimensions is interoceptive accuracy: the objective capacity to detect internal bodily signals. In the past few years, several labs across the world have started developing new tasks aimed at overcoming limitations inherent in classical measures of interoceptive accuracy. In this systematic review, we identified these tasks (since 2015) for the cardiac, respiratory, and gastrointestinal domains. For each identified task, we discuss their strengths and weaknesses, and make constructive suggestions for further improvement. In the general discussion, we discuss the (potentially elusive) possibility of reaching high validity in the measurement of interoceptive accuracy. We also point out that interoceptive accuracy may not be the most critical dimension for informing current theories, and we encourage researchers to investigate other dimensions of conscious interoception.



Keywords: interoception; interoceptive accuracy; measurement; reliability; validity.



PMID: 37708919 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105388