Definition
Interoception is the brain's continuous monitoring of internal bodily states — heartbeat, breathing rhythm, gut sensations, muscle tension, temperature — providing the physiological basis for felt emotions and the visceral component of self-awareness.
The term was coined by the neurologist Charles Sherrington in 1906 to describe receptors in internal organs, but its psychological significance was established by Antonio Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis (1994) and more recently by A.D. Craig's work on the insular cortex as the brain's 'map of the body'. In Damasio's framework, emotions are not purely cognitive events; they are body states that the brain reads and interprets. Interoception is the reading process.
Why it matters
How it works
The insular cortex and body mapping
The anterior insula is the primary interoceptive cortex. It receives ascending signals from visceral organs via the vagus nerve and other autonomic pathways, integrates them with emotional context from the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, and generates the felt sense of physiological state. Craig's 2009 research describes the anterior insula as the site where 'the material me' is constructed — where the body becomes a felt object rather than a blind machine. Structural volume of the anterior insula correlates with interoceptive accuracy across studies.
Interoception and emotion generation
Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis proposes that past emotional experiences leave 'somatic markers' — body states that are reactivated when similar situations arise. A poker player with a losing hand experiences a subtle increase in arousal and gut tension before consciously calculating odds; experienced players describe 'knowing' a hand is bad. This is somatic marking: the body has learned the outcome faster than the reasoning system has. Interoception is the channel through which this body knowledge reaches awareness.
Upregulating interoceptive sensitivity
Several practices increase interoceptive sensitivity: mindfulness body scan (systematic attention to bodily sensations from feet to scalp), yoga, somatic experiencing (Peter Levine's trauma therapy), and focused breathing practices that amplify heartbeat and diaphragm sensation. Research by Bessel van der Kolk shows that trauma disrupts interoception — the body is felt as dangerous and is therefore suppressed from awareness — and that body-based practices restore it. The clinical implication is that emotional regulation therapy targeting only cognition may miss the interoceptive substrate that emotions run on.