Brain and SpineAugust 1, 2025Abdullah Al Awadhi, Daniel Kiss-Bodolay, S. Grannò et al.
Introduction The preservation of the human self—a fundamental yet underexplored aspect of neurosurgical practice—has gained increasing attention in recent years. Research question How can neural correlates of self-consciousness be identified, monitored, and protected during brain tumor surgery, and how might this reshape the concept of “onco-functional balance”? Material and methods This review...
Recent research has shown that heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEPs), brain activity in response to heartbeats, are a useful neural measure for investigating the functional role of brain-body interactions in cognitive processes including self-consciousness. In 2 experiments, using intracranial electroencephalography (EEG), we investigated (1) the neural sources of HEPs, (2) the underlying...
Interoceptive signals, such as the heartbeat, are processed in a network of brain regions including the insular cortex. Recent studies have shown that such signals modulate perceptual and cognitive processing, and that they impact visual awareness. For example, visual stimuli presented synchronously to the heartbeat take longer to enter visual awareness than the same stimuli presented...