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How does aging affect our ability to sense our own body?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
As adults age, both their subjective awareness of internal bodily signals and their objective accuracy in detecting their own heartbeat decline.
How this study connects
Role on claims
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Objective interoceptive accuracy and subjective bodily awareness both systematically decline as healthy adults age.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Online BPQ (Study 1) plus lab heartbeat-tracking accuracy with age mediation (Study 2)
- N
- Study 1: 345 healthy adults from a 1,008-person survey; Study 2: 136 after 4 exclusions
- Population
- Healthy adults spanning a wide age range
- Outcome
- Self-reported interoceptive awareness and heartbeat-tracking accuracy as a function of age
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How does aging affect our ability to sense our own body?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
18% of the effect
The indirect effect of BMI accounted for 0.18 (18%) of the total effect between age and interoception ( ab/c ; see Jose, ), indicating partial mediation.
How is interoception defined in the introduction of this paper?
Interoception is described as the perception of the physical condition of the body (Craig, ), including numerous visceral sensations such as hunger, itch, respiratory and cardiac awareness (Khalsa & Lapidus, ).
Key findings
Subjective body awareness significantly decreased with age (r = -.337). Objective heartbeat tracking accuracy also declined across the adult lifespan (r = -.21), a relationship that was partially mediated by an age-related increase in body mass index, which accounted for 18% of the effect. Even after accounting for bodily and psychological variables, age still exerted a direct negative effect on interoceptive accuracy.
Methodology
In the initial study, 345 healthy adults aged 18 to 89 completed an online questionnaire measuring their subjective awareness of bodily sensations. In the subsequent study, 136 participants aged 20 to 90 completed a physical heartbeat tracking task to measure objective accuracy, alongside a time-counting control task. The researchers also collected physiological measures like BMI, blood pressure, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, and participants' general beliefs about average heart rates.
Limitations
This study relies on correlational data, meaning it cannot prove that aging directly causes the decline in interoceptive abilities. These studies examined subjective awareness and objective accuracy in separate participant groups, so it remains unclear how these different dimensions relate within the same individuals over time. Additionally, the objective tests relied on a single modality, cardiac tracking, which may not represent how aging affects other sensory modalities like hunger, breathing, or pain.
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