Scientific Reports
September 13, 2026
Gabriele Vercelli, Sofia Ciccarone, Anand Rai et al.
Alterations in interoception have been implicated in several neurological and psychiatric conditions, including those involving dissociative tendencies. Thus, investigating the link between interoception and dissociation may shed light on the mechanisms supporting self-consciousness and its disturbances. Here, we investigated whether interoception was associated with trait and experimentally...
PsyArXiv
August 14, 2026
Giuseppina Porciello, Laura Barca, Chiara Fini et al.
preprint
Recent theories of embodied cognition suggest that conceptual knowledge is grounded not only in external sensory experiences but also in internal bodily states. Interoception, the sensing of physiological signals from within the body, has been identified as a key modality for representing abstract concepts. However, whether this grounding is dynamically modulated by significant physiological...
PeerJ
August 24, 2023
Alisha Vabba, Giuseppina Porciello, Maria Serena Panasiti et al.
8 citations
The conscious processing of body signals influences higher-order psychological and cognitive functions, including self-awareness. Dysfunctions in the processing of these signals has been connected to neurological and psychiatric disorders characterized by altered states of self-consciousness. Studies indicate that perceiving the body through interoceptive signals ( e.g. , from internal organs...
Psychological Research
November 1, 2022
Alessandro Monti, Giuseppina Porciello, Maria Serena Panasiti et al.
Humans are unique in their ability to think about themselves and carry a more or less clear notion of who they are in their mind. Here we review recent evidence suggesting that the birth, maintenance, and loss of the abstract concept of 'self' is deeply tied to interoception, the sense of internal physiological signals. Interoception influences multiple facets of the self-concept, cutting...
iScience
September 1, 2022
A. Monti, Giuseppina Porciello, M. S. Panasiti et al.
Summary Bodily self-consciousness, the state of mind that allows humans to be aware of their own body, forms the backdrop for almost every human experience, yet its underpinnings remain elusive. Here we combine an ingestible, minimally invasive capsule with surface electrogastrography to probe if gut physiology correlates with bodily self-consciousness in a sample of healthy men during a...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
March 5, 2021
Alessandro Monti, Giuseppina Porciello, Maria Serena Panasiti et al.
6 citations
preprint
Bodily self-consciousness, the state of mind that allows humans to be aware of their own body, forms the backdrop for almost every human experience, yet its underpinnings remain elusive. Here we combine an ingestible, minimally invasive capsule with surface electrogastrography to probe if gut physiology correlates with bodily self-consciousness during a virtual bodily illusion. We discover that...
Alisha Vabba, Giuseppina Porciello, Maria Serena Panasiti et al.
preprint
The conscious processing of body signals influences higher-order psychological and cognitive processes, including self-awareness and body image. Dysfunctions in the processing of these signals has been connected to neurological and psychiatric disorders characterized by altered states of self-consciousness. Studies indicate that the process of perceiving the body through interoceptive signals...