Interoceptive Awareness and Anorexia Nervosa: When Emotions Influence the Perception of Physiological Sensations

This study measures the interoceptive awareness—using heartbeat self-counting and a sphygmomanometer—of 25 subjects suffering from AN and 25 control subjects, first at rest and then in an emotional situation. The results show that a deficit in interoceptive awareness was observed for the subjects suffering from AN at rest as well as when an emotional context was induced. This study encourages future investigations to focus on the impact of interoceptive deficit in AN to develop as efficient a care regimen as possible for these subjects.
Source: The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Brief Report Source Type: research