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It is widely known that among others, a pervasive symptom characterizing anorexia nervosa (AN) concerns body image overestimation, which largely contributes to the onset and maintenance of eating disorders. In the present study, we investigated the nature of the body image distortion by recording accuracy and reaction times in both a group of healthy controls and AN patients during two validated tasks requiring an implicit or explicit recognition of self/other hand stimuli, in which the perceived size of the stimuli was manipulated. Our results showed that (1) the perceived size of hand stimuli modulated both the implicit and explicit processing of body parts in both groups; (2) the implicit self-advantage emerged in both groups, but the bodily self, at an explicit level (perceptual, psycho-affective, cognitive) together with the integration and the distinction between self and other, was altered only in restrictive anorexia patients. Although further investigations will be necessary, these findings shed new light on the relationship between the different layers of self-experience and bodily self-disorders.

Facial expressions of pain are able to elicit empathy and adaptive behavioral responses in the observer. An influential theory posits that empathy relies on an affective mirror mechanism, according to which emotion recognition relies upon the internal simulation of motor and interoceptive states triggered by emotional stimuli. We tested this hypothesis comparing representations of self or others’ expressions of pain in nineteen young healthy female volunteers by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We hypothesized that one’s own facial expressions are more likely to elicit the internal simulation of emotions, being more strictly related to self. Video-clips of the facial expressions of each volunteer receiving either painful or non-painful mechanical stimulations to their right hand dorsum were recorded and used as stimuli in a 2 × 2 (Self/Other; Pain/No-Pain) within-subject design. During each trial, a 2 s video clip was presented, displaying either the subject’s own neutral or painful facial expressions (Self No-Pain, SNP; Self Pain, SP), or the expressions of other unfamiliar volunteers (Others’ No-Pain, ONP; Others’ Pain, OP), displaying a comparable emotional intensity. Participants were asked to indicate whether each video displayed a pain expression. fMRI signals were higher while viewing Pain than No-Pain stimuli in a large bilateral array of cortical areas including middle and superior temporal, supramarginal, superior mesial and inferior frontal (IFG) gyri, anterior insula (AI), anterior cingulate (ACC), and anterior mid-cingulate (aMCC) cortex, as well as right fusiform gyrus. Bilateral activations were also detected in thalamus and basal ganglia. The Self vs. Other contrast showed signal changes in ACC and aMCC, IFG, AI, and parietal cortex. A significant interaction between Self and Pain [(SP vs. SNP) >(OP vs. ONP)] was found in a pre-defined region of aMCC known to be also active during noxious stimulation. These findings demonstrate that the observation of one’s own and others’ facial expressions share a largely common neural network, but self-related stimuli induce generally higher activations. In line with our hypothesis, selectively greater activity for self pain-related stimuli was found in aMCC, a medial-wall region critical for pain perception and recognition.

The aim of this study is to investigate the bodily-self in Restrictive Anorexia, focusing on two basic aspects related to the bodily self: autonomic strategies in social behavior, in which others' social desirability features, and social cues (e.g., gaze) are modulated, and interoception (i.e., the sensitivity to stimuli originating inside the body). Furthermore, since previous studies carried out on healthy individuals found that interoception seems to contribute to the autonomic regulation of social behavior, as measured by Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), we aimed to explore this link in anorexia patients, whose ability to perceive their bodily signal seems to be impaired. To this purpose, we compared a group of anorexia patients (ANg; restrictive type) with a group of Healthy Controls (HCg) for RSA responses during both a resting state and a social proxemics task, for their explicit judgments of comfort in social distances during a behavioral proxemics task, and for their Interoceptive Accuracy (IA). The results showed that ANg displayed significantly lower social disposition and a flattened autonomic reactivity during the proxemics task, irrespective of the presence of others' socially desirable features or social cues. Moreover, unlike HCg, the autonomic arousal of ANg did not guide behavioral judgments of social distances. Finally, IA was strictly related to social disposition in both groups, but with opposite trends in ANg. We conclude that autonomic imbalance and its altered relationship with interoception might have a crucial role in anorexia disturbances.

The present study focuses on the multifaceted concept of self-disturbance in schizophrenia, adding knowledge about a not yet investigated aspect, which is the interoceptive accuracy. Starting from the assumption that interoceptive accuracy requires an intact sense of self, which otherwise was proved to be altered in schizophrenia, the aim of the present study was to explore interoceptive accuracy in a group of schizophrenia patients, compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, the possible association between interoceptive accuracy and patients’ positive and negative symptomatology was assessed. To pursue these goals, a group of 23 schizophrenia patients and a group of 23 healthy controls performed a heartbeat perception task. Patients’ symptomatology was assessed by means of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Results demonstrated significantly lower interoceptive accuracy in schizophrenia patients compared to healthy controls. This difference was not accounted for participants’ age, BMI, anxiety levels and heart rate. Furthermore, patients’ illness severity, attention and pharmacological treatment did not influence their interoceptive accuracy levels. Interestingly, a strong positive relation between interoceptive accuracy and positive symptoms severity, especially Grandiosity, was found. The present results demonstrate for the first time that interoceptive accuracy is altered in schizophrenia. Furthermore, they prove a specific association between interoceptive accuracy and positive symptomatology, suggesting that the symptom Grandiosity might be protective against an altered basic sense of self in patients characterized by higher sensibility to their inner bodily sensations.

The involvement of the sensorimotor system in language understanding has been widely demonstrated. However, the role of context in these studies has only recently started to be addressed. Though words are bearers of a semantic potential, meaning is the product of a pragmatic process. It needs to be situated in a context to be disambiguated. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that embodied simulation occurring during linguistic processing is contextually modulated to the extent that the same sentence, depending on the context of utterance, leads to the activation of different effector-specific brain motor areas. In order to test this hypothesis, we asked subjects to give a motor response with the hand or the foot to the presentation of ambiguous idioms containing action-related words when these are preceded by context sentences. The results directly support our hypothesis only in relation to the comprehension of hand-related action sentences.

Humans' ability to represent their body state from within through interoception has been proposed to predict different aspects of human cognition and behaviour. We focused on the possible contribution of interoceptive sensitivity to social behaviour as mediated by adaptive modulation of autonomic response. We, thus, investigated whether interoceptive sensitivity to one's heartbeat predicts participants' autonomic response at different social distances. We measured respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during either a Social or a Non-social task. In the Social task each participant viewed an experimenter performing a caress-like movement at different distances from their hand. In the Non-social task a metal stick was moved at the same distances from the participant's hand. We found a positive association between interoceptive sensitivity and autonomic response only for the social setting. Moreover, only good heartbeat perceivers showed higher autonomic response 1) in the social compared to the non-social setting, 2) specifically, when the experimenter's hand was moving at boundary of their peripersonal space (20 cm from the participant's hand). Our findings suggest that interoceptive sensitivity might contribute to interindividual differences concerning social attitudes and interpersonal space representation via recruitment of different adaptive autonomic response strategies.