Projects

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The role of interoception in anxiety and the underlying neural mechanisms KU Leuven

Jiang Qiu, Andreas von Leupoldt
Health Psychology

Anxiety has been shown to be closely linked to higher sensitivity for bodily sensations (interoception). However, the brain mechanisms underlying the relationship between anxiety and interoception are still far from being clear. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to investigate in four thematically linked studies the brain mechanisms underlying the relationship between anxiety and interoception in healthy participants. More specifically, in ...

The predictive value of inhibitory capacity in the regulation of interoceptive fear KU Leuven

Ilse Van Diest
Health Psychology
The three mechanism of fear acquisition (direct fear conditioning, indirect observational fear learning and indirect instructed fear learning) give insight into the various ways to design behavioral therapy interventions in order to extinguish or reduce fear. The basic principles of fear acquisition</> can be extended to interoceptive fear conditioning to interoceptive cues/bodily sensations (e.g. respiratory) and to indirect ways of ...

Learning not to fear suffication using non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation KU Leuven

Bram Vervliet
Laboratory for Biological Psychology
Fear of breathlessness is a common interoceptive ('originating from inside the body') fear in persons with panic disorder. Such fear is thought to aggravate the actual experience of breathlessness and may be a potential cause of 'medically unexplained' breathlessness. A major challenge is that interoceptive fears seem especially pervasive and resistant to extinction learning, the main active component in the cognitive-behavioral treatment of ...

From Pavlov to visceroception? The role of interoceptive fear conditioning in the development of gastrointestinal symptom-specific anxiety, and its impact on visceroception. KU Leuven

Ilse Van Diest
Health Psychology, Translational Research in GastroIntestinal Disorders
As a cardinal symptom of most functional gastrointestinal disorders, visceral pain and discomfort are very common and disabling. Unfortunately, such symptoms remain poorly understood and are hard to treat. There is a general consensus that fear towards gastrointestinal sensations may play an important role, but the mechanisms underlying such fear as well as its impact on visceral symptom perception are unclear. The project aims to elucidate ...

Brain-gut interactions in the regulation of visceral pain perception and food intake KU Leuven

Jan Tack
Nuclear Medicine & Molecular Imaging, Translational Research in GastroIntestinal Disorders

The importance of bidirectional brain-gut communication in the regulation and dysregulation of many vital functions in both health and disease is increasingly being recognized. This so-called brain-gut axis constitutes the core neurobiological substrate regulating normal digestive processes in health, including appetite and food intake, and in integrating these processes with the overall physical and emotional state of the body. Dysfunction ...