Frontiers in Psychology
June 9, 2015
Norman A. S. Farb, Jennifer Daubenmier, Cynthia Price et al.
630 citations
Interoception, the sense of internal bodily signals, is essential for embodiment, motivation, and well-being but remains poorly understood. This review integrates perspectives from neuroscience, clinical practice, and contemplative studies, introducing an expanded taxonomy of interoceptive processes. It argues that many of these processes can be explained by a predictive coding model of mind-body integration, which describes tension between expected and felt body sensations. This model parallels contemplative theories and links interoception to affective and psychosomatic disorders. Maladaptive interpretation of bodily sensations may underlie many contemporary maladies, and contemplative practices may reduce these biases, restoring a sense of presence and agency.
Frontiers in Pharmacology
July 13, 2022
Patrick Vizeli, Isabelle Straumann, Urs Duthaler et al.
43 citations
A single 125 mg dose of MDMA, given to 30 healthy men after fear conditioning and two hours before extinction learning, reduced skin conductance responses to a conditioned fear cue during both extinction learning and its recall the next day, compared with placebo. The drug did not affect fear-potentiated startle responses. Subjective feelings of trust and openness during extinction learning were linked to poorer discrimination between danger and safety cues during recall. MDMA raised oxytocin levels fourfold, but this increase did not correlate with fear extinction outcomes. The findings suggest MDMA can accelerate fear extinction learning and retention, at least for some physiological measures of fear, which may help explain its therapeutic benefit in PTSD.
Human Brain Mapping
April 9, 2021
Obada Al Zoubi, Masaya Misaki, Jerzy Bodurka et al.
39 citations
A single 90-minute session of Floatation-REST, which minimizes sensory input, reduces resting-state functional connectivity within and between posterior hubs of the default-mode network and somatomotor cortices extending into the posterior insula. A control condition of resting in a zero-gravity chair produced a similar pattern of reduced connectivity. The findings suggest that reducing nervous system stimulation is reflected by decreased connectivity in brain networks that construct and map the sense of self.
Journal of Psychopharmacology
June 27, 2005
Franz X. Vollenweider, Matthias E. Liechti, Martin P. Paulus
24 citations
MDMA alters decision-making in a way that depends on the degree of success or failure. In a crossover trial with 42 healthy volunteers, a single 1.5 mg/kg oral dose of MDMA increased how much previous responses and stimuli influenced current choices, particularly when error rates were low (20% and 50%). The drug did not significantly change basic response characteristics like response latency or switching, and participants' self-assessed psychological states did not predict the decision-making patterns. These results suggest that acute MDMA affects success-related response selection during decision-making.