VISCERAL SENSORY NEUROSCIENCE: INTEROCEPTION

Abstract

Review of VISCERAL SENSORY NEUROSCIENCE: INTEROCEPTION By Oliver G. Cameron 2002. Oxford: Oxford University Press... Interoception: it is perhaps surprising that this word is not common medical parlance since amongst the other terms introduced by Sherrington, proprioception certainly is. As originally defined interoception encompassed just visceral sensations but now the term is used to include the physiological condition of the entire body and the ability of visceral afferent information to reach awareness and affect behaviour, either directly or indirectly. The system of interoception as a whole constitutes “the material me” and relates to how we perceive feelings from our bodies that determine our mood, sense of well?being and emotions. Clearly this is a field of great relevance to many areas of medicine, to all branches of “internal medicine” as well medical psychology and possibly some branches of psychiatry. The reason why this term is probably missing from our clinical vocabulary so far is that although we have been aware of the underlying concepts of interoception for decades there have been few methods of systematically studying the underlying principles in humans until the advent of functional imaging. Certainly it has been one of the disappointed aims of clinical neurophysiological research that has been unable to contribute much to our understanding of self?awareness. This is because all that is accessible to that discipline is the response of large, heavily myelinated fibres, usually to electrical stimuli, whereas the interceptive system afferents are small diameter fibres that can usefully be considered as the afferent limb of the autonomic nervous system.