Consciousness, emotions and cognitive challenge
The neural monitoring of visceral inputs is thought to reflect a core building block of consciousness related to first-person perspective
Cardiac inputs are likely involved in shaping our perception, meta-cognition and ongoing mental processes
The role of brain-heart interactions in consciousness
D. Candia-Rivera (2022).
Brain-heart interactions in the neurobiology of consciousness
Current Research in Neurobiology.
The neural monitoring of visceral inputs might play a role in first-person perspective
In healthy participants, how the brain responds to heartbeats, measured as the heartbeat-evoked response (HER), correlates with perceptual, bodily, and self-consciousness.
The heartbeat and the dawn of physiological feelings
D. Candia-Rivera, V. Catrambone, J. Thayer, C. Gentili and G. Valenza (2022).
Cardiac sympathetic-vagal activity initiates a functional brain-body response to emotional arousal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2119599119
Estimated communication from parasympathetic (vagal) to EEG distinguishes low vs high arousal.
Ascending parasympathetic modulations to delta, theta and gamma correlated to the subjective report of arousal.
Ascending parasympathetic inputs shape the perceived arousal in emotion elicitation
Ascending cardiac inputs may shape the feeling of stress
D. Candia-Rivera, K. Norouzi, T. Z. Ramsøy, and G. Valenza.
Dynamic fluctuations in ascending heart–to–brain modulations under mental stress elicitation
American Journal of Physiology—Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology
https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpregu.00251.2022
Stress elicitation induced an increased variability in the directional heart–to–brain functional interplay
Primarily from sympathetic activity targeting a wide range of EEG oscillations.
Bodily feedback may modulate the perceived stress caused by an increased cognitive demand.