Links among emotional awareness, somatic awareness and autonomic homeostatic processing

Summary & key facts

This paper reviews research about how people notice their emotions and internal body signals, and how those skills relate to the body's automatic systems that keep us balanced (like heart rate and sweating). The author argues that deep brain areas tied to emotion also control those automatic systems. Problems in the automatic system — for example being overly driven by the sympathetic “fight-or-flight” side at rest or showing weak change when stressed — seem linked to trouble noticing feelings and body signals. The review also suggests that noticing body signals may be more basic than noticing emotions, and that future studies should measure both brain activity and body/autonomic signals tog

Key facts:

• The paper is a review, which means the author collected and compared many studies instead of doing a new experiment.
• Emotional awareness means how well someone notices and understands their feelings. Lack of emotional awareness is often called alexithymia.
• Somatic interoceptive awareness means how well someone senses internal body signals, like heartbeat or stomach feelings. Lack of this is sometimes called alexisomia.
• The author says that deep, limbic-related brain systems are major players for both feeling emotions and controlling automatic body functions that keep the body stable.
• Many studies report that measures of automatic body activity (for example heart-rate patterns) and how that activity reacts to stress are linked to both emotional awareness and body-signal awareness.
• The paper proposes a hypothesis that certain kinds of autonomic problems — especially having a high baseline of sympathetic activity (the ‘fight-or-flight’ side) and/or showing reduced change or variability when stressed — are involved in d
• Several studies suggest that emotional awareness and body-signal awareness are linked or work together, and that awareness of body signals may come before emotional awareness during processing.
• The review points out a complex finding: some people show both reduced ability to sense internal signals and an increased tendency to amplify or worry about bodily sensations at the same time.
• The author calls for studies that combine brain imaging with direct measures of peripheral autonomic function (like heart-rate variability) to better understand how awareness and bodily states relate to psychosomatic symptoms and overall mi

Abstract

Emotional awareness and somatic interoceptive awareness are essential processes for human psychosomatic health. A typical trait of lacking emotional awareness related to psychosomatic symptoms is alexithymia. In contrast, alexisomia refers to the trait of lacking somatic awareness. Links between emotional and somatic awareness and homeostatic processing are also significant for the psychosomatic health. The purpose of the present paper is to review the links among emotional awareness, somatic interoceptive awareness and autonomic homeostatic processing. On the basis of the collected evidence, the following arguments were presented(1): (1) The main subcortical neural substrates for these processes are limbic-related systems, which are also responsible for autonomic functions for optimization of homeostatic efficiency. (2) Considerable studies have shown that autonomic activity and/or reactivity to stress correlate with both emotional and interoceptive awareness. A hypothesis was advocated about the links between the two types of awareness and autonomic function: Autonomic dysfunction, especially high sympathetic tone at baseline and/or attenuated reactivity or variability to stress, appears to be involved in disturbance of emotional and interoceptive awareness. (3) Several studies suggest that a link or a cooperative relationship exists between emotional and somatic awareness, and that somatic awareness is the more fundamental of the two types of awareness. Emotional awareness, somatic awareness and autonomic homeostatic processing generally occur in parallel or concurrently. However, some complex features of pathologies include coexistence of reduced interoceptive awareness and somatosensory amplification. The autonomic homeostatic process is fundamentally involved in emotional and somatic awareness. Investigation of these types of awareness with both neuroimaging evaluations and estimation of peripheral autonomic function are required as next steps for exploration of the relationship between awareness and human somatic states including somatic symptoms as well as general psychosomatic health.

Topics

Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes Mental Health and Psychiatry Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments

Categories

Health Sciences Medicine Psychiatry and Mental health

Tags

Cognitive psychology Psychiatry Psychology Psychosomatic medicine

Conditions & symptoms

Anxiety Chronic Pain Depression Anxiety or worry Chronic pain Sadness or low mood