Spinal fMRI of interoceptive attention/awareness in experts and novices.

Many disciplines/traditions that promote interoceptive (inner sensation of body parts) attention/awareness (IAA) train practitioners to both attend to and be aware of interoceptive sensory experiences in body parts. The effect of such practices has been investigated in previous imaging studies but limited to cerebral neural activity. Here, for the first time, we studied the impact of these practices on the spinal neural activity of experts and novices. We also attempted to clarify the effect of constant and deep breathing, a paradigm utilized in concentration practices to avoid mind wandering, on IAA-related spinal neural activity. Subjects performed IAA tasks with and without a deep and constant breathing pattern in two sessions. Results showed that neural activity in the spinal segment innervating the attended-to body area increased in experts (P = 0.04) when they performed IAA and that this increase was significantly larger for experts versus novices in each of the sessions (P = 0.024). The significant effects of IAA and expertise on spinal neural activity are consistent with and elaborate on previous reports showing similar effects on cerebral neural activity. As the spinal cord directly innervates body parts, the results might indicate that IAA has an instantaneous (possibly beneficial) effect on the physical body after extended training.

Supramarginal activity in interoceptive attention tasks.

Interoceptive (feelings from inside organs) attention/awareness (IAA) is a body-related aspect of cognition that pursues homeostasis by detecting afferent signals, and there are practices aimed at focusing one's attention and awareness towards such feelings inside one's own body. There is a claim that these practices improve health which is one reason that neural correlates of such practices and IAA in general have been investigated in previous imaging studies. In several of these studies which used subjects with no or limited experience in IAA practices there was a report of supramarginal (SM) activity during IAA tasks, but the role of SM in IAA remain unclear. We first investigated if we could find similar results in novices, and if this activity is sensitive to the designated body part in the IAA task. We further investigated if these regions would be similarly recruited in subjects with extensive experience of IAA tasks while comparing results with a group of age and gender matched novices. Results in the novices replicated that of previous studies, and we showed this is the same for IAA tasks regarding two different parts of the body. Group comparison results showed opposite profiles of SM activation for the two groups; novices showed activation and the experts showed deactivation of the SM. The results suggest that novices recruit SM during IAA possibly due to lack of experience in those tasks but this could be alleviated for performing IAA as illustrated by activation profile in experts.