Interoception, our 8th sense, connects us to inner bodily awareness (e.g. pain, thirst, hunger, desire, hygiene & toilet needs, temperature, heart rate, breathing, even our bones, etc.) rather than sensations outside our body (vision, noise, smells, touch, taste and movement).
Autism & Interoception – YouTube
The difference from noticing the fragrance and colour and sounds during a wak through bue bell woods, to recognising the way it makes you feel? Senses from outside yourself combine with those inside yourself, to give you an over all sense.
Interoception, the perception of sensations from inside the body, also incudes the autonomic nervous system, which houses our emotions.
Interoception: The process of sensing signals from the body, like heartbeat, breathing, hunger, or the need to go to the toilet.
What is Interoception and Why is it Important? · Frontiers for Young Minds
Neuroception, the unconscious sense enabling us to notice danger (being with a safe human (a care-giver) or a potential non-safe human (a stranger)). Also, internal body state of safe or dangerous, triggers neurobiologically determined prosocial or defensive behaviours (e.g. knowing I’m about to throw-up, hit out at someone or something etc).
Interoception and neuroception are linked because they each inform the other, but in autism when our attention is taken over we may not notice or be able to name either inner or outer sensory information.
Autism & Interoception – YouTube
What is the word for the sense of signals that come from inside your body, such as feeling your heart beating and your breathing, or knowing when you are hungry? This is called interoception. Interoception is one of our senses, like vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.
Most of us have heard of the five basic senses, touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing, but few of us know the term interoception. Interoception means sensing internal signals from your body, like when you are hungry, when your heart is beating fast, or when you need the toilet. You probably do not pay attention to these signals all the time, but if your teacher asks you to give a class presentation or you have just sprinted for the bus, you will probably feel your heart thumping in your chest. Parts of your brain are constantly tracking your internal signals to keep your body functioning properly and to notify you when something changes. For example, your brain might notice you are running low on water, prompting you to feel thirsty and grab a drink. Keeping the body in a balanced, neutral state is called homeostasis.
What is Interoception and Why is it Important? · Frontiers for Young Minds
Interoception is, simply stated, an awareness of the inner state of the body. Just as we have sensors that take in information from the outside world (retinas, cochleas, taste buds, olfactory bulbs), we have sensors inside our bodies that send our brains a constant flow of data from within. These sensations are generated in places all over the body—in our internal organs, in our muscles, even in our bones—and then travel via multiple pathways to a structure in the brain called the insula. Such internal reports are merged with several other streams of information—our active thoughts and memories, sensory inputs gathered from the external world—and integrated into a single snapshot of our present condition, a sense of “how I feel” in the moment, as well as a sense of the actions we must take to maintain a state of internal balance.
All of us experience these bodily signals—but some of us feel them more keenly than others. To measure interoceptive awareness, scientists apply the heartbeat detection test, the one John Coates used with his group of financial traders: test takers are asked to identify the instant when their heart beats, without placing a hand on the chest or resting a finger on a wrist. Researchers have found a surprisingly wide range in terms of how people score. Some individuals are interoceptive champions, able to determine accurately and consistently when their heartbeats happen. Others are interoceptive duds: they can’t feel the rhythm.
Though we may not notice such differences, they are real, and even visible to scientists using brain-scanning technology: the size and activity level of the brain’s interoceptive hub, the insula, vary among individuals and are correlated with their awareness of interoceptive sensations. How such differences arise in the first place is not yet known. All of us begin life with our interoceptive capacities already operating; interoceptive awareness continues to develop across childhood and adolescence. Differences in sensitivity to internal signals may be influenced by genetic factors, as well as by the environments in which we grow up, including the communications we receive from caregivers about how we should respond to our bodily prompts.
Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain | Open Library
Attaching a label to our interoceptive sensations allows us to begin to regulate them; without such attentive self-regulation, we may find our feelings overwhelming, or we may misinterpret their source. Research shows that the simple act of giving a name to what we’re feeling has a profound effect on the nervous system, immediately dialing down the body’s stress response.
Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain | Open Library
Interoception is our ability to notice, monitor, and understand signals from our bodies. The accounts of Autistic people emphasize the centrality of challenges with interoception to their lived experience and quality of life, including difficulties with knowing when they are thirsty, need to go to the bathroom, or are feeling unwell. These challenges likely stand in the way of many capabilities that are important for a fulfilling and independent life.
Interoception and Bodily Autonomy
Bodily autonomy is essential to Autistic well-being. Interoception supports bodily autonomy through guiding behavior in support of homeostasis. Promoting adaptive interoceptive skills is therefore crucial to improving Autistic well-being. To date, research on interoception in Autistic people has been poorly informed by the experiences and goals of Autistic people, has had a narrow focus on comparison with non-autistic norms in search of deficits, and has had limited impact on Autistic quality of life.
Interoception is a set of core physiological and cognitive processes that determine the condition of the body. Interoception guides the sensing, interpretation, and integration of the body’s internal landscape. Relevant signals include afferent traffic from the cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, nociceptive, thermoregulatory, immune, and endocrine systems, although there remains debate about the exact boundaries between interoception, exteroception, and proprioception. Interest in interoception has increased dramatically in recent years, and is now recognized as integral to many capabilities that promote bodily autonomy and integrity, including self-awareness, emotional experience and regulation, and activities of daily living. Bodily autonomy reflects the ability to make decisions about one’s own body, life, and future, without coercion or violence. Bodily integrity is a related construct that emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy, self-ownership, and self-determination of human beings over their own bodies. Together, bodily autonomy and integrity refer to the human right that everyone should enjoy in making self-determined decisions over their own body. The bodily autonomy and integrity of Autistic people are sadly violated too frequently, in multifarious ways, through no fault of their own, as evidenced by high rates of coercive interventions, unnecessary use of physical and pharmacological restraint, and sexual assault. Here we wish to focus on the subtle ways in which differences in interoceptive systems, which guide the interpretation of bodily sensations, promoting adaptive responses to changes in the internal and external environment, can also present barriers to bodily integrity and autonomy.
Interoception is key to independent participation in everyday activities because when interoceptive signals are meaningful and can be trusted, the person feels a sense of safety in their body and a coherent sense of self. Despite this, the questionable validity of interoceptive measures makes it unclear how such findings could be used to support the everyday lives of Autistic people. The narratives of Autistic people reinforce the idea that they experience challenges with interoception in day-to-day life, and suggest that the ways in which interoception is studied in Autistic people could be better tailored to fostering improvements in these day-to-day challenges. Understanding interoception in autism has the potential to improve Autistic well-being, but the perspectives of Autistic people should be centered to inform research design, interpretation, and dissemination.
Interoception is undoubtedly crucial to bodily autonomy, emotion regulation, and physical and mental health.
Interoception in Autism, Pitfalls, and Promise: A Participatory Research Perspective – Eleanor R. Palser, Wenn B. Lawson, Emma Goodall, Elizabeth Pellicano, 2026
Interoception is a fundamental life skill that offers a path to personal autonomy. Research on interoception in Autistic people would benefit from a reduced focus on comparison with poorly defined non-autistic benchmarks and greater focus on how interoception impacts bodily autonomy, quality of life, and the ability to participate in the community. Participatory practices can help guide these research efforts, ensuring that the needs and goals of Autistic people remain at the forefront.
Interoception and Emotion Regulation
Challenges with emotion dysregulation, which, when unmitigated, can lead to meltdowns, shutdowns, and self-injurious behavior, are more common in Autistic people than non-autistic people. Emotion regulation is a multicomponent process that can involve up- or downregulating the thoughts, behaviors, or autonomic nervous system activity associated with an emotion in service of current goals, using both deliberate control and more implicit efforts. Interoception is likely implicated in these emotion regulation processes at several levels.
Interoception and Monotropism
Autistic people seem to struggle the most with detecting interoceptive signals when they are occupied with other engaging tasks, but may have no problems in detecting interoceptive information when it is attended to, such as in a relatively controlled laboratory setting, if other distractors are removed.
These quotes, from a study of Autistic flow states, suggest that Autistic people may not necessarily experience altered conveyance of afferent interoceptive signals to the central nervous system, but may instead have a reduced propensity to access, notice, or engage with interoceptive information.
