Dual interaction between heartbeat-evoked responses and stimuli
Yihui Zhang,
Jianfeng Zhang,
Musi Xie,
Nai Ding,
Yang Zhang,
Pengmin Qin
Affiliations
Yihui Zhang
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
Jianfeng Zhang
Center for Brain Disorders and Cognitive Sciences, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; School of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
Musi Xie
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
Nai Ding
Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education, College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Sciences, Zhejiang University, China
Yang Zhang
Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences & Center for Neurobehavioral Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA
Pengmin Qin
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China; Pazhou Lab, Guangzhou, China; Corresponding author at: School of Psychology, South China Normal University, No. 55, West of Zhongshan Avenue, Tianhe District, Guangzhou, China
Heartbeat-evoked responses (HERs) can interact with external stimuli and play a crucial role in shaping perception, self-related processes, and emotional processes. On the one hand, the external stimulus could modulate HERs. On the other hand, the HERs could affect cognitive processing of the external stimulus. Whether the same neural mechanism underlies these two processes, however, remains unclear. Here, we investigated this interactive mechanism by measuring HERs using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and two name perception tasks. Specifically, we tested (1) how hearing a subject's own name (SON) modulates HERs and (2) how the judgment of an SON is biased by prestimulus HERs. The results showed a dual interaction between HERs and SON. In particular, SON can modulate HERs for heartbeats occurring from 200 to 1200 ms after SON presentation. In addition, prestimulus HERs can bias the SON judgment when a stimulus is presented. Importantly, MEG activities from these two types of interactions differed in spatial and temporal patterns, suggesting that they may be associated with distinct neural pathways. These findings extend our understanding of brain-heart interactions.
