I can feel my heartbeat: Dancers have increased interoceptive accuracy

摘要: Interoception is the process of perceiving afferent signals arising from within body including heart rate (HR), gastric signals, etc., and has been described as a mechanism crucially involved in creation self-awareness selfhood. The heartbeat perception task tool to measure individuals' interoceptive accuracy (IAcc). IAcc correlates positively with measures attributes emotional sensitivity, empathy, prosocial behavior, efficient decision making. only moderate general population, attempts identify groups people who might have higher due their specific training (e.g., yoga, meditation) not successful. However, recent study musicians suggests that those trained arts exhibit high IAcc. Here, we tested 20 professional dancers female control participants on task. Dancers had IAcc, this effect was independent lower rates (a proxy physical fitness), counting ability, knowledge about HR. An additional between-groups analysis after median split dancer group (based years dance experience) showed junior dancers' differed controls, senior than both controls. General art experience correlated No correlations were found between questionnaire experience, alexithymia. These findings are discussed context current theories interoception emotion-highlighting features be related