Dissociative Symptoms and Interoceptive Integration.
Current topics in behavioral neurosciences January 1, 2025 Sascha P Woelk, Sarah N Garfinkel 8 citations
Dissociative symptoms involve disturbances in self-experience and perception, linked to a breakdown in the integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, and perception. This paper examines dissociation through the lens of interoception, the sense of the body's internal state. Dissociative symptoms are associated with blunted autonomic reactivity and reduced interoceptive precision. Interoceptive signals shape emotional feelings, memory, and self-representation. Disrupted integration of these signals into cognition may contribute to detachment from the body and world, blunted emotions, and altered recall. Understanding altered interoceptive integration could reveal neurophysiological mechanisms underlying dissociative disorders and inform new therapeutic approaches targeting interoceptive processing.