Bodily organs like the heart and lungs continuously interact with the brain to maintain physiological balance, and recent research shows that signals from these organs also influence high-level brain functions. These signals modulate electrophysiological dynamics, affecting how emotional and self-related information is processed, which shapes conscious experience. This review synthesizes electrophysiological evidence on interoception—the sensing of internal body states—focusing on cardiac, respiratory, and gastric signals. It shows that altered neurophysiological responses to interoception may underlie deficits in psychopathology. Limited evidence on the development of interoceptive electrophysiology in infancy and adolescence is summarized, along with attempts to investigate causal neural mechanisms. Important areas for further research are highlighted.
A meta-analysis of 73 studies confirms that a short period of monocular deprivation in healthy adults transiently shifts ocular dominance toward the deprived eye. The effect is reliable but varies in size, mainly due to deprivation duration and measurement technique, while being stable across different patching methods and eye selection. Similar shifts occur without deprivation, through distorting or making a monocular image task-irrelevant. These findings inform models of visual plasticity, suggesting that early visual processing remains plastic beyond developmental critical periods, with potential applications for recovery of visual functions.