其他摘要 | Interoception refers to the attention to and conscious awareness of the bodilymilieu, including the ability to process, integrate and regulate internal signals.Interoception consists of three dimensions, namely “interoceptive accuracy (IA)”,“interoceptivesensitivity”and“interoceptiveawareness”.Thisnaturalpsychophysical function is the premise to develop self-awareness and carry outsocialcommunication.Recently,severaltheorieshavebeenpositedthatinteroceptive atypicality may be a pathological factor for autism spectrum disorders(ASD). Nevertheless, few studies have investigated the phenomenal manifestationsand neural mechanism of interoception in ASD. Of the limited studies, the extantliterature reveals inconsistent results. The relationship between neurodiversity ofinteroception, alexithymia, and sub-clinical autistic traits is yet to be determined.Therefore, we have conducted four studies to systematically investigate interoceptiveatypicality of ASD individuals at both behavioural and neural levels. We examinedthethree-dimensionalinteroceptionandinteroceptive-exteroceptivesensoryintegration in both clinical and subclinical participants, and established relationshipsbetween autistic traits, interoception, alexithymia, and empathy.
Study 1 examined the intercorrelations between interoceptive sensibility,autistic,alexithymic,empathic,andself-relatedtraitsin1360non-clinicalindividuals (aged 15-52 yrs) using network analysis. The resultant network, whichshowed reasonable stability and test–retest consistency, revealed patterns connectingautistic traits to interoceptive sensibility, empathy, alexithymia, and self-awareness.The node of alexithymia exhibited the highest centrality and expected influence. Thehigh-autistic subgroup exhibited lower interoceptive sensibility than the low-autisticsubgroup.
Study 2 examined multidimentional interoception in a sample of 114neurotypical college students (aged 18-22 yrs) with high or low autistic traits. All participantscompletedthe“Eye-trackingInteroceptiveAccuracyTaskandself-report questionnaires. Results supported the positive association betweenautistic traitsandalexithymia,butdidnotsupporttheirassociationwithmultidimensional interoception. In the second part of the study, we administered thesame task to 50 children with ASD, and 63 typically developing (TD) controls withhigh and low levels of autistic traits (aged 6-13 yrs). Children with ASD exhibitedatypical cardiac interoception. Moreover, TD children with high level of autistictraits also exhibited diminished IA compared with children with low level of autistictraits.
Study 3 adopted resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) approach toexamine the neural correlates of multidimensional interoception in 62 young adults(aged 18-27 yrs). In particular, it aimed to explore the associations betweenfunctional connectivity of interoception and autistic traits. We found rsFC betweenthe dorsal posterior insula, the left supplementary motor area, and right middlecingulum correlated positively with interoceptive accuracy, and rsFC between thelateral ventral anterior insula, the left middle occipital gyrus, and the rightcerebellum correlated positively with interoceptive sensibility. Autistic traits weresignificantly corelated with wide range of rsFC within the interoceptive brainnetwork, including the insula, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the amygdala.
Study 4 examined the interoception performances in 119 typically-developingadults (aged 18-22 yrs) using the Interoception-Exteroception SynchronicityJudgement (IESJ) task. Participants with low level of autistic traits showedcomparable interoceptive accuracy, exteroceptive accuracy, and balancing scorescompared with participants with high level of traits. Moreover, higher level ofalexithymia was also correlated with lower interoceptive accuracy and interoceptivesensibility.Taken together, the present findings demonstrated atypical interoception in bothclinical and subclinical ASD individuals at both behavioural and neural levels.Moreover, atypical interoception also correlated with alexithymia and socialcognition in these two groups. These findings have important implications for understandingsensoryatypicalityofinteroceptioninASD,andhintoninteroception’s potentiality for diagnostic and screening purposes, as well as thedevelopment of treatment regime for ASD. |
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