cheryl
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The brain’s reading of the body’s state is key to mental health - Psyche
How are you feeling right now? Your brain has many jobs, but its most important might be to answer this question. Perhaps you are hot, relaxed, hungry, in pain – or something else? Your ability to sense the physical state of your body in this way helps you survive. It helps you eat instead of starve. It tells you to call the hospital if you feel you might be having a heart attack. But how do you know how you feel?
Often, you can’t see, hear, touch, smell or taste information about the internal state of your body. Instead, you use a sense known as ‘interoception’ (in contrast to ‘exteroception’, which is how you sense the outside of the body via vision, taste, smell, touch and hearing). The notion of interoception was conceived more than 100 years ago when Charles Sherrington proposed the idea of there being specialised receptors inside the body that send information from our organ systems to the brain.
Of course, when I asked how you’re feeling right now, you might well have answered differently – you might have said you are feeling sad, stressed, excited, bored or some other emotional state. You don’t have an organ of boredom that communicates this internal sensation to the brain. However, interpreting your emotional feelings has a surprising amount in common with interpreting your bodily states. One example is judging whether you are feeling stressed rather than hungry. Both involve physical changes in the body: when you’re hungry, your stomach rumbles, you might feel weak; when you’re stressed, your heart and breathing rate increase, perhaps you even sweat or shiver. Perceiving and interpreting these physical changes in both cases involves interoception.
How are you feeling right now? Your brain has many jobs, but its most important might be to answer this question. Perhaps you are hot, relaxed, hungry, in pain – or something else? Your ability to sense the physical state of your body in this way helps you survive. It helps you eat instead of starve. It tells you to call the hospital if you feel you might be having a heart attack. But how do you know how you feel?
Often, you can’t see, hear, touch, smell or taste information about the internal state of your body. Instead, you use a sense known as ‘interoception’ (in contrast to ‘exteroception’, which is how you sense the outside of the body via vision, taste, smell, touch and hearing). The notion of interoception was conceived more than 100 years ago when Charles Sherrington proposed the idea of there being specialised receptors inside the body that send information from our organ systems to the brain.
Of course, when I asked how you’re feeling right now, you might well have answered differently – you might have said you are feeling sad, stressed, excited, bored or some other emotional state. You don’t have an organ of boredom that communicates this internal sensation to the brain. However, interpreting your emotional feelings has a surprising amount in common with interpreting your bodily states. One example is judging whether you are feeling stressed rather than hungry. Both involve physical changes in the body: when you’re hungry, your stomach rumbles, you might feel weak; when you’re stressed, your heart and breathing rate increase, perhaps you even sweat or shiver. Perceiving and interpreting these physical changes in both cases involves interoception.