Toward a multidisciplinary neurobiology of interoception and mental health

Abstract

Interoception, the process by which the nervous system senses, interprets and integrates internal physiological signals, is fundamental to health, playing a key role in brain-body feedback loops that maintain homeostasis. Disruptions in interoceptive processing are common across psychiatric disorders, highlighting its relevance for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. This review examines recent translational advances in interoception research, with a focus on anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders, and functional gastrointestinal disorders, where altered interoceptive signaling contributes to core symptoms. We discuss emerging cellular and molecular insights from animal models and address barriers to translating these findings to human psychopathology. To bridge this gap, we propose a "roving lens" approach, a multidisciplinary framework that dynamically integrates findings across biological scales, species, and methods. Here, multidisciplinary denotes team-based collaboration in which multiple fields contribute complementary expertise to a shared question, without fully dissolving disciplinary boundaries. By uniting mechanistic animal research with human clinical insight, this approach can advance interoceptive neuroscience and inform novel therapeutic strategies for psychiatric disorders.

Topics & Concepts