Autism, the predictive brain and interoception

Description

Most people think we have 5 basic senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. But we do not only have senses for the outside world around us. Human beings also have senses for what’s going on inside themselves, inside their own body: a sense for movement and balance (vestibular), a sense for the position of your body (proprioception) and – last but not least – a sense for what’s going on in all your organs. This 8th is known as interoception.

Most studies on the sensory issues in autism have focused on the senses for the outside world. Less is known about how autistic people sense their own body. However, interoception is vital for our health, not only our physical health, also for our mental health. Interoception is the basis for recognizing and regulation emotions, two things that are affected in autism.

In this workshop we will explain how interoception works, based on the predictive coding perspective. Based on what we know about the predictive coding in autism, we will describe the typical differences we see in in how autistic brains tend to make sense of the rest of the body, leading to not only challenges in emotion regulation, but also sleeping, eating and toileting problems. And, obviously, we will link these insights to some practical strategies that can be used to address interoception in autism and to help autistic people to make sense of their own bodily signals.