User:Markworthen/Interoception

Interoception
Interoception is the sensory system that receives and integrates information from the body. Interoception informs and influences several aspects of human functioning, including cognition, emotion, motivation, and self-awareness.

Scientific interest in interoception has increased substantially over the last 10–20 years. Empirical studies and critical analysis across a variety of disciplines have revealed that interoception is a complex phenomenon with multiple interacting functions and underlying processes.

Brief overview and explanatory tale
The body's organ systems and associated structures transmit sensory data via afferent nerves into the brain's interoceptive centers. For example, visceral organs communicate sensory data such as pressure, pain, touch, or distension. Data about physiological processes such as heart rate, physical equilibrium, or the need for waste elimination are transmitted to interoceptive brain centers, as are motivational states such as hunger or sexual arousal.

The returning freshman
A young adult arrives home after their first semester away at university. They smell freshly baked peach pie, whereupon they start to salivate, and feel really hungry. They also experience a sense of security associated with homelife, and happiness because they will soon see their father, who is well-known for his scrumptious peach pies. This young adult's experience involves external data detected by their olfactory sense, which seems to precipitate salivation, followed by a motivational state (hunger), and a feeling state (security), and an anticipatory feeling state (happiness). It turns out their father is not home, but the pie awaits and the college freshman proceeds to eat two hearty portions. They then feel lethargic as they think "oh wow, I really ate too much", while simultaneously loosening their belt as they feel their stomach distending and their bowels complaining in a series of slightly uncomfortable motile contractions. After a two-hour nap, they wake up feeling groggy, depressed, and insecure, thinking, "I just can't control myself when I'm at home."

Interoception and the returning freshman
Contemporary theories of interoception would suggest that salivation was classically conditioned—associated with and caused by—smelling their father's peach pie, and that both the external stimuli (odor from freshly baked peach pie) detected by the olfactory sensory system, and  internal stimuli (salivation) detected by the interoceptive sensory system, both influenced the subsequent motivational state (hunger), and feeling states (happiness and security) and their associated cognitions (such as "it's good to be home").