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Abstract:

Attention modulates the relative weighting of information and plays a critical role in modern theories of perception. While its role in exteroception, the perception of the external environment, has been extensively studied, attentional processes in interoception, the perception of bodily states, are less well understood. In this study, we exploited high- field (7 Tesla) functional magnetic resonance imaging and concurrent field monitoring to investigate interoceptive attention at the level of cortical layers during a heartbeat attention task.

Voxel-wise analyses reveal increased activity in the bilateral dorsal mid-insula during interoceptive attention (attending to one’s heartbeat) compared to exteroceptive attention (attending to auditory white noise). Layer-specific analyses further demonstrate that this difference in activity is significantly higher in upper compared to lower cortical layers. This activation pattern persists after accounting for potential vascular artifacts through a deconvolution analysis with a physiological point spread function (PSF).

To our knowledge, these findings represent the first empirical demonstration of layer-specific processes during interoceptive attention in human cortex. They may prove useful to inform and constrain theories of computational principles and physiological implementation of interoception.

Figure 2: Classical Analysis of Interoceptive Attention Effects on Insula Activity.

Figure 3: Visualization of within-subject ANOVA

Figure 5: Results of deconvolution with a physiological PSF

Citation

Müller-Schrader, Matthias, Frederike H. Petzschner, Jakob Heinzle, et al. ‘Differences in Layer-Specific Activation of the Insula during Interoceptive vs. Exteroceptive Attention’. Preprint, bioRxiv, 9 October 2025. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.08.679044.

@article {Mueller-Schrader2025.10.08.679044,
	author = {M{\"u}ller-Schrader, Matthias and Petzschner, Frederike H. and Heinzle, Jakob and Kasper, Lars and Wellstein, Katharina V. and Bayer, Johanna and Engel, Maria and Bianchi, Samuel and Weber, Lilian A. and Pruessmann, Klaas P. and Stephan, Klaas Enno},
	title = {Differences in layer-specific activation of the insula during interoceptive vs. exteroceptive attention},
	elocation-id = {2025.10.08.679044},
	year = {2025},
	doi = {10.1101/2025.10.08.679044},
	URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2025/10/09/2025.10.08.679044},
	eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2025/10/09/2025.10.08.679044.full.pdf},
	journal = {bioRxiv}
}