The relationship between brain neural correlates, self-objectification, and interoceptive sensibility

Interoceptive sensibility refers to the tendency to focus on internal bodily states and the capacity to detect them. As the subjective dimension of interoception, interoceptive sensibility plays a key role in individuals’ health. Self-objectification, a process by which individuals tend to adopt a third-person’s perspective of their physical self, leads to decreased interoceptive sensibility. However, few studies regarding the neural basis of interoceptive sensibility and the underlying mechanism of the relationship between self-objectification and interoceptive sensibility have been conducted. In this study, we assessed the resting-state brain activity (fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation, fALFF) and connectivity (resting-state functional connectivity, RSFC) of 442 college students. Whole-brain correlation analyses revealed that a higher level of interoceptive sensibility was linked to higher fALFF in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left cerebellum and to lower fALFF in the left paracentral lobule and left superior/middle temporal gyrus. Interoceptive sensibility also was negatively associated with the RSFC between the right IFG and the right secondary somatosensory cortex (S2) and the right IFG and the ventral premotor cortex (VPC). These brain regions and connections are mainly responsible for switching attention to internal/external information and processing body-related somatosensory as well as sensory information. Mediation analyses suggested that the fALFF of the right IFG and the RSFC of IFG-S2 and IFG-VPC mediated the relationship between self-objectification and interoceptive sensibility. Overall, these results suggest that the IFG may be the neural marker of interoceptive sensibility and reveal several potential mediation models of the relationship between brain neural correlates and self-objectification and interoceptive sensibility.