Probing Interoceptive Processes: Behavioral, Psychological, and Neurophysiological Levels

Probing Interoceptive Processes: Behavioral, Psychological, and Neurophysiological Levels is part of the 2020 NCCIH Hot Topics Webinar series organized by NCCIH. Please join us online through NIH Videocast; registration is not required and there is no cost.

Have you ever wondered how we sense and regulate the myriad needs of our bodies? How do we sense the basic needs to breathe, eat, drink, or urinate? How do we sense, interpret, and integrate signals from within our body’s internal landscape across conscious and unconscious levels? This experience of our internal bodies is called interoception. It is considered the sixth sense, in addition to our five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. A better understanding of how it works is critically dependent on the ability to measure and probe the interoceptive process at behavioral, psychological, and neurophysiological levels.

During this event, three experts in the field will present current research and discuss future opportunities to study interoceptive processes.

Variations of interoceptive experience at the interface of mind and body
Wolf Mehling, Ph.D.
Professor of Clinical Family and Community Medicine
University of California at San Francisco

Accessing interoceptive neural circuits via the vagus nerve
Eleni Frangos, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
NCCIH Intramural Research Program

Microneurography technique: applications in interoceptive research
Jeanie Park, M.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine and Physiology
Emory University School of Medicine

Audience participation is encouraged during the question and answer session. You may send questions in advance or during the event to: NCCIHwebinarQ@mail.nih.gov. 

Join us at https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=38089.