Interoceptive aberrations in major depressive disorder: Neural mechanisms, clinical correlates, and targeted interventions

Table 1 Comparison of major interoceptive dimensions and commonly used assessment tools

Dimension (definition)	Tool/method	Measurement	Key advantages/limitations	Target populations	Ref.
IAc: Performance in detecting or discriminating bodily signals	HCT	Agreement between reported and recorded heartbeats	Simple and widely used; influenced by time estimation, heart-rate knowledge, physiology, instructions, and scoring	Clinical and nonclinical adults	[6,26,29-31]
IAc: Performance in detecting or discriminating bodily signals	Heartbeat discrimination tasks	Trial-based discrimination of cardiac signals	Less reliant on explicit counting; sensitive to attention, cardiac signal strength, and task design; limited standardization	Experimental and clinical samples	[5,28,33]
ISe: Self-reported attention to and appraisal of bodily sensations	MAIA/MAIA-2	Multidimensional bodily attention, appraisal, and regulation	Broad multidimensional assessment; reliability and factor structure vary; interpretation may be influenced by alexithymia and cultural context	General and clinical adults, including MDD	[24,25,34,40,68]
ISe: Self-reported attention to and appraisal of bodily sensations	BPQ-SF	Body awareness and perceived autonomic reactivity	Brief and easy to administer; may overlap with somatic or anxiety-related symptoms; does not assess objective accuracy	General, clinical, and cardiovascular samples	[35-37]
IAw: Correspondence between task performance and confidence	Performance-confidence correspondence	Calibration of performance and confidence	Assesses metacognitive insight; depends on task validity and confidence metrics	Studies combining interoceptive tasks with confidence ratings	[4,5,69]

BPQ-SF: Body Perception Questionnaire-Short Form; HCT: Heartbeat counting task; IAc: Interoceptive accuracy; IAw: Interoceptive awareness; ISe: Interoceptive sensibility; MAIA: Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness; MAIA-2: Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness, Version 2; MDD: Major depressive disorder.