Interoception and pain: body-mind integration, rupture, and repair
Author: Sarah N Garfinkel1, Christopher Eccleston2,3,4
Affiliation:
1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
2 Centre for Pain Research, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom.
3 Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
4 Department of Psychology, The University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Conference/Journal: Pain
Date published: 2025 Feb 6
Other:
Special Notes: doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000003515. , Word Count: 294
Full Text: https://journals.lww.com/pain/fulltext/9900/interoception_and_pain__body_mind_integration,.812.aspx
Interoception—how the internal state of the body is represented physiologically and psychologically—offers a new frontier for understanding body–mind integration in the context of pain. Interoceptive science has grown in the last 10 years: from the earlier study of peripheral signalling to new methodologies to quantify bodily representation at distinct hierarchical levels of processing. The time is right for a thorough consideration of body–brain integration in pain that promises to enable novel insights and opportunities for clinical intervention. Interoception can be delineated across multiple levels of pain processing, from the afferent signalling of the body to the motivational attribution of sensation to illness or action.
Each interoceptive dimension has implications for the processing of pain, across conscious and unconscious levels. Merging interoceptive and pain science offers unique opportunity for mechanistic discovery, in particular for the onset and maintenance of high impact chronic pain.15 First, we review the field of interoception developed outside of pain, with attention to its recent history and its methods. Second, we review how these methods have been applied in pain and draw them into a platform of shared methods and insights, which can guide a programme of study. For example, we will draw on the few extant studies on interoceptive precision, the neural processing of interoceptive signals, and the nature of afferent signals on pain processing as they may relate to body–mind integration, rupture, and repair. Third, we propose a model of interoception and pain with a focus on different levels of analysis from integration of afferent input driving homeostasis, through to the cognitive architecture of attention to interruption and the function of belief structures around symptom perception.
PMID: 39977330 DOI: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000003515
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