The Increasing Effect of Interoception on Brain Frontal Responsiveness During a Socially Framed Motor Synchronization Task

This research explored the effect of explicit Interoceptive Attentiveness (IA) manipulation on hemodynamic brain correlates during a task involving interpersonal motor coordination framed with a social goal. Participants performed a task requiring interpersonal movement synchrony with and without a social framing in both explicit IA and control conditions. Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to record oxygenated (O2Hb) and deoxygenated hemoglobin (HHb) changes during the tasks. According to the results, the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is involved in high-order social cognition and interpersonal relations processing, was more responsive when inducing the explicit focus (IA) on the breath during the socially framed motor task requiring synchronization, as indicated by increased O2Hb. In the absence of a broader social frame, this effect was not significant for the motor task. Overall, the present study suggests that when a joint task is performed and the individual focuses on his/her physiological body reactions, the brain hemodynamic correlates are “boosted” in neuroanatomical regions that support sustained attention, reorientation of attention, social responsiveness, and synchronization. Furthermore, the PFC responds significantly more as the person consciously focuses on physiological interoceptive correlates and performs a motor task requiring synchronization, particularly when the task is socially framed.