How our brains interpret signals from inside the body has a surprisingly big influence on the mind, an insight that’s leading to new ways of tackling conditions like depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.
Health
February 2, 2022
Brett Ryder
Lying in the dark, my senses strain for information and find none. I am floating in warm, salty water that is so close to my body temperature that I cannot tell where my body ends and the water begins. After a while, my senses quiet down and my attention turns inward. Now all I am aware of is my breathing and the surprisingly strong beating of my heart.
I’m inside a pod-shaped flotation tank to try to increase my powers of interoception. According to a growing body of research, interoceptive sensations—those that originate within the body, from its tissues, organs, and chemicals circulating in the bloodstream—are the key to not only improving mental well-being, but also revolutionary new treatments for common problems. hard-to-treat conditions such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. With several now in clinical trials, it’s a change of direction that could make a brain-only focus on mental health a thing of the past, offering hope for progress for millions.
In recent years, it has become clear that to truly understand mental health, you need to consider how much the brain cares about what goes on below the neck. For any animal, survival depends on how well it can detect the physical changes that may indicate a threat and take the appropriate steps to get things back on track. Interoception is a bit like our sixth sense: the ability to detect these bodily changes, from the beating of the heart to the changing concentrations of certain hormones in the blood, as well as the psychological expression of these as feelings and emotions. …
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