Koreki, Akihiro;
Terasawa, Yuri;
Nuruki, Atsuo;
Oi, Hiroki;
Critchley, Hugo;
Yogarajah, Mahinda;
Onaya, Mitsumoto;
(2024)
Altered sense of agency in schizophrenia: the aberrant effect of cardiac interoceptive signals.
Frontiers in Psychiatry
, 15
, Article 1441585. 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1441585.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia (SZ) is characterized by abnormalities in self-representation, including a disturbed sense of agency (SoA). The continuous processing of sensory information concerning the internal state of the body (interoception) is argued to be fundamental to neural representations of the self. We, therefore, tested if aberrant interoception underpins disturbances in SoA in SZ, focusing on cardiac interoceptive signaling. METHODS: Forty-two SZ and 29 non-clinical participants (healthy controls; HC) performed an intentional binding task to measure SoA during concurrent heartbeat recording. The effect of cardiac interoceptive signals on SoA was measured by the difference in intentional binding effect during systole and diastole. This measure was standardized based on the overall intentional binding effect to control for non-cardiac factors, and then compared between SZ and HC. RESULTS: Our study revealed a significant difference between SZ and HC groups, with opposite effects of cardiac systole on SoA. Specifically, cardiac systole disrupted SoA in SZ, contrasting with the enhanced SoA in HC. Across the SZ group, the extent to which SoA was disrupted by cardiac systole correlated significantly with a clinical proxy for symptom instability, namely the number of hospital admissions for hallucinations and delusions. Furthermore, the disruption was particularly observed in patients with severe hallucinations. CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed a disturbance in the impact of cardiac interoceptive signals on an implicit index of SoA in schizophrenia. This supports the notion that pathophysiological disruption of the central integration of interoceptive information increases vulnerability to disturbances in self-representation and the associated expression of schizophrenic symptoms.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Altered sense of agency in schizophrenia: the aberrant effect of cardiac interoceptive signals |
| Location: | Switzerland |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1441585 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1441585 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 Koreki, Terasawa, Nuruki, Oi, Critchley, Yogarajah and Onaya. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Psychiatry, brain, interoception, heart, schizophrenia, sense of agency, self, ATTRIBUTION, PREDICTIONS, EMOTION, SELF |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10220280 |
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