Functional neuroanatomy of interoceptive processing in children and adolescents: a pilot study

In adults, interoception – the sense of the physiological condition of the body - appears to influence emotion processing, cognition, behavior and various somatic and mental health disorders. Adults demonstrate frontal-insula-parietal-anterior cingulate cortex activation during the heartbeat detection task, a common interoceptive measure. Little, however, is known about the functional neuroanatomy underlying interoception in children. The current pilot study examined interoceptive processing in children and adolescents with fMRI while using the heartbeat detection task. Our main findings demonstrate that children as young as the age of six activate the left insula, cuneus, inferior parietal lobule and prefrontal regions. These findings are similar to those in adults when comparing heartbeat and tone detection conditions. Age was associated with increased activation within the dACC, orbital frontal cortex and the mid-inferior frontal gyri. Thus, our pilot study may provide important information about the neurodevelopment of interoceptive processing abilities in children and a task for future interoception neuroimaging studies in children.