Abstract
The authors declare no competing financial interests.Author contributions: N.F. and C.J.P. designed research; N.A.S.F. and C.J.P. performed research; N.A.S.F. contributed unpublished reagents/analytic tools; N.A.S.F. and Z.Z. analyzed data; N.A.S.F., Z.Z., and C.J.P. wrote the paper.This work was supported by a Research Intramural Funding Program (RIFP) award from the School of Nursing at the University of Washington and by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences Grant UL1 TR002319. Data analysis infrastructure and trainee salary was supported by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Council (NSERC) Discovery Grant RGPIN-2015-05901.Interoception, the representation of the body’s internal state, serves as a foundation for emotion, motivation, and wellbeing. Yet despite its centrality in human experience, the neural mechanisms of interoceptive attention are poorly understood. The Interoceptive/Exteroceptive Attention Task (IEAT) is a novel neuroimaging paradigm that compares behavioral tracking of the respiratory cycle (Active Interoception) to tracking of a visual stimulus (Active Exteroception). Twenty-two healthy participants completed the IEAT during two separate scanning sessions (