Dynamic Regulation of Interoceptive Processing in Relaxation and Anxiety

Abstract Interoceptive processing—the neural monitoring of bodily signals—functions through regulatory mechanisms that adapt bodily signal monitoring to different cognitive and environmental demands. However, temporal dynamics underlying these mechanisms and their modulation by anxiety remain incompletely characterized. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we examined heartbeat-evoked responses (HERs) across interoceptive and exteroceptive tasks under anxiety induction, with a relaxation condition included to control for anxiety-related effects. Under relaxation, interoceptive processing exhibited context-dependent modulation: HERs were attenuated during exteroceptive relative to interoceptive tasks, predominantly in sensorimotor cortical regions. This regulation manifested progressively across sequential heartbeats following a linear temporal trajectory, revealing dynamic evolution rather than instantaneous switching. Anxiety, in contrast, disrupted this adaptive dynamic pattern, abolishing such progressive context-dependent modulation by specifically impairing interoceptive suppression during exteroceptive task. Control analyses confirmed these effects were not attributable to cardiac artifacts or other physiological confounds. These findings establish a neurophysiological mechanism whereby anxiety impairs the dynamics of adaptive interoceptive regulation. That, in turn, results in inappropriate integration of bodily signals into cognitive processing and provides a neural basis for interoceptive hypervigilance observed in anxiety.