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From interoception to control over the internal body: The ideomotor hypothesis of voluntary interoaction.

Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: When it comes to body movements in space, we are experts in learning fine-grained voluntary control, for example when manipulating tiny objects. Voluntarily controlling actions in the internal body (e.g., decreasing heart rate), however, is something only a few experts achieve after extensive training, as for example in yoga and meditation. Not much is currently known about the learning mechanism underlying the acquisition of voluntary control over visceromotor functions (i.e. interoaction) or why it is so difficult compared to controlling our somatomotor functions (i.e. exteroaction). To address this question, we put forward the ideomotor hypothesis of voluntary interoaction, which asserts that voluntary extero- and interoactions are governed by the same general principle, namely the anticipation of sensory feedback. We apply this hypothesis to two techniques that can used to acquire voluntary control over interoactions, i.e., autogenic training and biofeedback training. Our hypothesis explains why learning to control interoactions is more difficult, as the afferent signal we receive (i.e., interoceptive signals from the internal body) is of lower sensory quality than the afferent signal we receive from exteroaction (i.e., exteroceptive signals from the environment). We support this claim by discussing the nature of interoception and propose ways in which to test predictions from this hypothesis. We show the theoretical value of our hypothesis by comparing its explanatory power with other frameworks in the literature and examine ways in which our work can guide future work on the optimization of voluntary control learning over interoactions, which has several clinical applications.
DOI: 10.1037/rev0000528
Language: English
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4405319561
FWCI: 0.694
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Cited by: 3
Related to: 10