Altered Interoceptive Awareness in High Habitual Symptom Reporters and Patients With Somatoform Disorders, 2020, Flasinski et al

[Andy]

Objective: Altered interoception may play a major role in the etiology of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). It remains unclear, however, if these alterations concern noticing of signals or if they are limited to the interpretation of signals. We investigated whether individuals with MUS differ in interoceptive awareness as assessed with the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) questionnaire.

Methods: Study 1: A total of 486 individuals completed the Screening for Somatoform Disorders (SOMS-2). Thirty-two individuals each of the upper and lower decile of the SOMS distribution (low symptom reporters/LSR, high symptom reporters/HSR) completed the MAIA. Study 2: MAIA scores of individuals diagnosed with somatoform disorder (SFD; n = 26) were compared to individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD; n = 25) and healthy controls (HC; n = 26).

Results: HSR had lower scores than LSR on the MAIA scales Not-Distracting and Not-Worrying. The SFD and MDD groups showed lower scores than HC on the MAIA scales Not-Distracting, Self-Regulation, and Trusting. The MDD group scored lower than the other two groups on the scales Body Listening and Attention Regulation. There were no group differences on the scale Noticing.

Conclusion: HSR, SFD, and MDD patients do not differ from HC in the awareness of noticing of interoceptive signal processing, whereas cognitive facets of interoception, such as distraction or self-regulation are differentially affected. This highlights the necessity of including specifically targeted interventions, which improve interoceptive awareness, in the prevention and treatment of SFDs.

Open access, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01859/full

 

[Peter T]

And what about the people with supposed MUS, who are habitual under reporters of symptoms because they have given up the medical profession?

What about the fact that focusing on every new symptom may be a rational response to a poorly understood condition of uncertain aetiology by people who desperately want to get better, but who have been let down by doctors unwilling to just say ‘I don’t know’?

 

[rvallee]

More donkey science. So many untestable assumptions, the abstract is dripping with opinion and judgment.

The comparison to MDD is entirely useless. Is MDD somatization? Is it unexplained? Explained? What comparison does it actually hold besides the usual baseless opinion many people make that somatization is basically depression. Or anxiety. Or anything, really.

This is not science. Do better. Or better yet since you can't just don't do anything, the world will be better off. Take up gardening, occupy your mind with silly things, it really doesn't matter. I swear actual aliens would manage to do a better job of understanding this. The conclusion is completely aspirational nonsense.

 

[spinoza577]

Altered interoception may play a major role in the etiology of medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). It remains unclear, however, if these alterations concern noticing of signals or if they are limited to the interpretation of signals.

An "interoception" does for sure not work like a perception of the outer environment.

If it is not too annoying:

A perception of the outer world can be false or true. The perceived thing shows a dependence on the being which is perceiving - though obviously it cannot create what it wants, if it wants to achieve a true perception. In this latter case though the perceived thing may be called realized.

But some inner things which pop up to the consciousness, are sadly real right from the beginning. It may well be a thing to get them into terms, afterwards (whereas terms already had been used in achieving perceptions.)


Another thing would be to cultivate things, and then other unpleasant things would pop up after a while. But this may be empirically hopeless anyway and even more, at least much more complicate. I would be curious for any concrete theory here ...