Review Interoceptive accuracy and bias in somatic symptom disorder, illness anxiety disorder, and functional syndromes:... 2022 Wolters et al

[Andy]

Abstract​

Somatic symptom disorder, illness anxiety disorder, and functional syndromes are characterized by burdensome preoccupation with somatic symptoms. Etiological models propose either increased interoceptive accuracy through hypervigilance to the body, or decreased and biased interoception through top-down predictions about sensory events.

This systematic review and meta-analysis summarizes findings of 68 studies examining interoceptive accuracy and 8 studies examining response biases in clinical or non-clinical groups. Analyses yielded a medium population effect size for decreased interoceptive accuracy in functional syndromes, but no observable effect in somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder. The overall effect size was highly heterogeneous. Regarding response bias, there was a small significant effect in somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder. Our findings strengthen the notion of top-down factors that result in biased rather than accurate perception of body signals in somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder.

Open access

 

[rvallee]

Etiological models propose either increased interoceptive accuracy through hypervigilance to the body, or decreased and biased interoception through top-down predictions about sensory events.

Could be x, could also be not x. S C I E N C E.

According to this theory, affected individuals perceive even the slightest fluctuations in physiological signals because of heightened attention to the body.

That's complete nonsense and obviously made-up to support not the model, not because it makes sense or there is any data supporting it. They keep trying to describe our subjective experience but never actually listen to what we tell them of our subjective experience. Pure circular thinking/vibing. LLMs may be the force behind the oddly-named "vibe coding", but "vibe medicine" is 100% pure human slop.

We classified the tasks into the following six task types: heartbeat mental tracking tasks, signal detection tasks, thresholding procedures, position sense tasks, the rubber hand illusion paradigm, and correlational tasks

This doesn't have much to do with either interoception or with the perception of unrelated symptoms. Most appear to be the heartbeat tracking, which also has nothing to do with this, and is pure nonsense. I have some odd sinus/inner ear issues that make it so that I can easily 'clog' my ears and easily hear heart beats. In addition to how narrow the range of typical heart beats is, this is a terrible attempt at manufacturing evidence for a made-up model. There are so many similar reasons that can affect this kind of perception.

Subgroup analyses showed that while IAcc was significantly reduced in functional syndromes, it was not altered in somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder. This contradicts models that assume lower perceptual thresholds for body signals in these disorders.

This is a bad review with bad, biased data from bad, biased studies and it's still negative but they won't shut up about it anyway so what's the point? It's already been asserted that this is key and no one will change their minds about it. And sure enough they spend several paragraphs after that arguing how it's actually relevant, but at a deeper level, or whatever.

There are not enough volcanoes in the world for the sheer amount of bullshit like this that needs to be thrown into them.