Enhanced behavioural and brain responses to interoceptive signals in musicians

Interoception – the processing of the physiological states of the entire body, communicated to the brain and integrated to influence behaviour - has been a an area of interest in various domains. Previous research using a behavioural measure of interoception demonstrated higher interoceptive accuracy in musicians in comparison to non-musicians. The present study extends this research by comparing additional measures of interoception between the two groups. In addition to the previously assessed heartbeat discrimination task, we used the heartbeat tracking task to measure interoceptive accuracy (IAcc). We also tested two sub-scales from the multidimensional assessment of interoceptive awareness questionnaire to measure interoceptive sensibility (IS). Another measure we recorded was an electrophysiological index of interoceptive processing - the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP). The participants comprised musicians (N = 20) and age-matched non-musicians (N = 20). We predicted that musicians would have higher IAcc and IS, and would show a greater HEP amplitude than non-musicians. Results showed that musicians had higher IAcc and IS scores than non-musicians and they showed larger HEP amplitude (in the left hemisphere only). This is the first demonstration of enhanced neural processing of interoceptive signals and interoceptive sensibility in musicians. We suggest that these differences may relate to alterations to insula connectivity as a result of musical training.