ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
How the heart speaks to the brain: neural activity during cardiorespiratory interoceptive stimulation.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Find your rhythm and regulate: Breath-synced vibration feedback during breath-focused mindfulness reduces respiration variability in trauma-exposed adults.Journal of anxiety disorders · 2025Trial
- Heartbeat-evoked neural response abnormalities in generalized anxiety disorder during peripheral adrenergic stimulation.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- The practice of meditation is not associated with improved interoceptive awareness of the heartbeat.Psychophysiology · 2020Trial
- Heart-derived factors and organ cross-talk in settings of health and disease: new knowledge and clinical opportunities for multimorbidity.The Journal of physiology · 2026Review
- Convergent and selective representations of pain, appetitive processes, aversive processes, and cognitive control in the insula.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The Heart-Brain Axis in the Artificial Intelligence Era: Integrating Old and New Insights Towards New Targeting and Innovative Neuro- and Cardio-Therapeutics.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
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- Transdiagnostic failure to adapt interoceptive precision estimates across affective, substance use, and eating disorders: A replication and extension of previous results.Biological psychology · 2024Article
- Hemispheric divergence of interoceptive processing across psychiatric disorders.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Heartbeat-evoked potentials following voluntary hyperventilation in epilepsy patients: respiratory influences on cardiac interoception.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
- Specificity of Quantitative Functional Brain Mapping with Arterial Spin-Labeling for Preoperative Assessment.AJNR. American journal of neuroradiology · 2023Article
- Enhanced Myocardial Adenylyl Cyclase Activity Alters Heart-Brain Communication.JACC. Clinical electrophysiology · 2023Article
- Transdiagnostic failure to adapt interoceptive precision estimates across affective, substance use, and eating disorders: A replication study.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2023Article
- Parieto-occipital ERP indicators of gut mechanosensation in humans.Nature communications · 2023Article
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- In the Body's Eye: The computational anatomy of interoceptive inference.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- An insula hierarchical network architecture for active interoceptive inference.Royal Society open science · 2022Review
- Disturbance of desire-goal motivational dynamics during different exercise intensity domains.Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports · 2022Article
- Respiration, Heartbeat, and Conscious Tactile Perception.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Prominent theories emphasize key roles for the insular cortex in the central representation of interoceptive sensations, but how this brain region responds dynamically to changes in interoceptive state remains incompletely understood. Here, we systematically modulated cardiorespiratory sensations in humans using bolus infusions of isoproterenol, a rapidly acting peripheral beta-adrenergic agonist similar to adrenaline. To identify central neural processes underlying these parametrically modulated interoceptive states, we used pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) to simultaneously measure blood-oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) and arterial spin labelling (ASL) signals in healthy participants. Isoproterenol infusions induced dose-dependent increases in heart rate and cardiorespiratory interoception, with all participants endorsing increased sensations at the highest dose. These reports were accompanied by increased BOLD and ASL activation of the right insular cortex at the highest dose. Different responses across insula subregions were also observed. During anticipation, insula activation increased in more anterior regions. During stimulation, activation increased in the mid-dorsal and posterior insula on the right, but decreased in the same regions on the left. This study demonstrates the feasibility of phMRI for assessing brain activation during adrenergic interoceptive stimulation, and provides further evidence supporting a dynamic role for the insula in representing changes in cardiorespiratory states.This article is part of the themed issue 'Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.