Resources
Authors & Affiliations
Žan Zelič, Gioia Giusti, Laura Sebastiani, Enrica Laura Santarcangelo
Abstract
Highly hypnotizable individuals (highs) show lower interoceptive accuracy than individuals with low hypnotizability (lows), which may be due to their lower insular grey matter volume. However, none of the previous studies investigated interoceptive processing in medium hypnotizable individuals (mediums), who represent the majority of the population. Thus, in the present research we compared both interoceptive accuracy and heartbeat-evoked cortical potentials (HEP) in all three hypnotizability groups. EEG and ECG were recorded in a sample of 14 highs, 14 mediums and 18 lows (classified by the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale: Form A) during two consecutive experimental phases. The first consisted of 10-minute open-eye baseline, while the second consisted of 2-minute open-eye, closed-eye, and heartbeat-counting conditions, repeated three times, followed by a 2-minute open-eye post-counting condition. HEP analysis revealed higher amplitudes in lows compared to highs/mediums in the right central region in both early and late HEP components during the first phase, and only in the early HEP component during the second phase. Furthermore, in the left frontal regions, the HEP amplitude of mediums was higher during counting compared to open/closed-eye conditions, whereas the HEP amplitude of highs was lower during counting than post-counting rest. In contrast, the interoceptive accuracy index, calculated for the heartbeat counting task showed no hypnotizability-related differences. To conclude, the interoceptive processing in the general population seems to be more similar to that of highs than to that of lows, although an observed negative correlation between HEP and hypnotizability scores might indicate a more linear relationship.