TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wölk, Julian
A1  - Sütterlin, Stefan
A1  - Koch, Stefan
A1  - Vögele, Claus
A1  - Schulz, Stefan M.
T1  - Enhanced cardiac perception predicts impaired performance in the Iowa Gambling Task in patients with panic disorder
JF  - Brain and Behavior
N2  - OBJECTIVE:
Somatic marker theory predicts that somatic cues serve intuitive decision making; however, cardiovascular symptoms are threat cues for patients with panic disorder (PD). Therefore, enhanced cardiac perception may aid intuitive decision making only in healthy individuals, but impair intuitive decision making in PD patients.

METHODS:
PD patients and age-and sex-matched volunteers without a psychiatric diagnosis (n=17, respectively) completed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) as a measure of intuitive decision making. Interindividual differences in cardiac perception were assessed with a common mental-tracking task.

RESULTS:
In line with our hypothesis, we found a pattern of opposing associations (Fisher's Z=1.78, P=0.04) of high cardiac perception with improved IGT-performance in matched control-participants (r=0.36, n=14) but impaired IGT-performance in PD patients (r=-0.38, n=13).

CONCLUSION:
Interoceptive skills, typically assumed to aid intuitive decision making, can have the opposite effect in PD patients who experience interoceptive cues as threatening, and tend to avoid them. This may explain why PD patients frequently have problems with decision making in everyday life. Screening of cardiac perception may help identifying patients who benefit from specifically tailored interventions.
KW  - panic disorder
KW  - somatic marker hypothesis
KW  - cardiac perception
KW  - Iowa Gambling Task
KW  - decision making
KW  - interoception
Y1  - 2014
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-119865
SN  - 2162-3279
VL  - 4
IS  - 2
ER  -