TY  - JOUR
A1  - Herbert, Beate M.
A1  - Muth, Eric R.
A1  - Pollatos, Olga
A1  - Herbert, Cornelia
T1  - Interoception across Modalities: On the Relationship between Cardiac Awareness and the Sensitivity for Gastric Functions
JF  - PLoS One
N2  - The individual sensitivity for ones internal bodily signals ("interoceptive awareness") has been shown to be of relevance for a broad range of cognitive and affective functions. Interoceptive awareness has been primarily assessed via measuring the sensitivity for ones cardiac signals ("cardiac awareness") which can be non-invasively measured by heartbeat perception tasks. It is an open question whether cardiac awareness is related to the sensitivity for other bodily, visceral functions. This study investigated the relationship between cardiac awareness and the sensitivity for gastric functions in healthy female persons by using non-invasive methods. Heartbeat perception as a measure for cardiac awareness was assessed by a heartbeat tracking task and gastric sensitivity was assessed by a water load test. Gastric myoelectrical activity was measured by electrogastrography (EGG) and subjective feelings of fullness, valence, arousal and nausea were assessed. The results show that cardiac awareness was inversely correlated with ingested water volume and with normogastric activity after water load. However, persons with good and poor cardiac awareness did not differ in their subjective ratings of fullness, nausea and affective feelings after drinking. This suggests that good heartbeat perceivers ingested less water because they subjectively felt more intense signals of fullness during this lower amount of water intake compared to poor heartbeat perceivers who ingested more water until feeling the same signs of fullness. These findings demonstrate that cardiac awareness is related to greater sensitivity for gastric functions, suggesting that there is a general sensitivity for interoceptive processes across the gastric and cardiac modality.
KW  - anterior insula
KW  - water load test
KW  - cephalic-vagal influences
KW  - emotional experience
KW  - heartbeat perception
KW  - myoelectric activity
KW  - cardiovascular arousal
KW  - dyspeptic symptoms
KW  - balloon distension
KW  - eating disorders
Y1  - 2012
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-130733
VL  - 7
IS  - 5
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Enck, Paul
A1  - Hefner, Jochen
A1  - Herbert, Beate M.
A1  - Mazurak, Nazar
A1  - Weimer, Katja
A1  - Muth, Eric R.
A1  - Zipfel, Stephan
A1  - Martens, Ute
T1  - Sensitivity and Specificity of Hypnosis Effects on Gastric Myoelectrical Activity
JF  - PLOS ONE
N2  - Objectives: The effects of hypnosis on physiological (gastrointestinal) functions are incompletely understood, and it is unknown whether they are hypnosis-specific and gut-specific, or simply unspecific effects of relaxation. 
Design: Sixty-two healthy female volunteers were randomly assigned to either a single session of hypnotic suggestion of ingesting an appetizing meal and an unappetizing meal, or to relax and concentrate on having an appetizing or unappetizing meal, while the electrogastrogram (EGG) was recorded. At the end of the session, participants drank water until they felt full, in order to detect EGG-signal changes after ingestion of a true gastric load. During both conditions participants reported their subjective well-being, hunger and disgust at several time points. 
Results: Imagining eating food induced subjective feelings of hunger and disgust as well as changes in the EGG similar to, but more pronounced than those seen with a real gastric water load during both hypnosis and relaxation conditions. These effects were more pronounced when imagining an appetizing meal than with an unappetizing meal. There was no significant difference between the hypnosis and relaxation conditions. 
Conclusion: Imagination with and without hypnosis exhibits similar changes in subjective and objective measures in response to imagining an appetizing and an unappetizing food, indicating high sensitivity but low specificity.
KW  - irritable-bowle-sondrome
KW  - GUT-directed hypnotherapy
KW  - electrogastrographic egg activities
KW  - functional abdominal pain
KW  - water load test
KW  - hypnotic susceptibility
KW  - cognitive hypnotherapy
KW  - rectal sensitivity
KW  - gastrointestinal symptoms
KW  - ulcerative colitis
Y1  - 2013
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-127654
SN  - 1932-6203
VL  - 8
IS  - 12
ER  -