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Category: Project

Description: Altered interoceptive processes in Tourette Syndrome may foster the premonitory urges that commonly precede tics. Twenty-one adults with TS and 22 controls completed a heartbeat tracking task, and a heartbeat discrimination task. Three dimensions of interoception were examined: objective accuracy, metacognitive awareness, and subjective (self-report) sensibility. Trait interoceptive prediction error was calculated as the discrepancy between interoceptive accuracy and sensibility. Participants with TS tended toward lower interoceptive accuracy on the heartbeat tracking task, and increased self-reported interoceptive sensibility. The discrepancy between lower interoceptive accuracy and heightened sensibility, i.e. the trait interoceptive prediction error, was significantly greater in TS compared to controls. This suggests a heightened higher-order sensitivity to bodily sensations in TS, relative to a noisier perceptual representation of afferent bodily signals. Moreover, interoceptive sensibility predicted the severity of premonitory sensations and tics. This suggests interventions that work to align dimensions of interoceptive experience in TS hold therapeutic potential.