Interoception and Fear: New Insights into Brain-Body Communication

Interoception plays a critical role in how the brain interprets and constructs models of internal bodily states, enabling us to anticipate, respond to, and recover from physical and psychological threats. In this lecture, I introduce the science of interoception as a gateway to understanding fear-inducing physical and mental health conditions, present cutting-edge approaches to studying heart-brain and gut-brain communication) and describe a novel interoceptive intervention for therapeutically modulating fearful states. Sahib Khalsa, MD, PhD, is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist specializing in interoception—the brain's perception of internal bodily signals—and its impact on mental and physical health. He is an Associate Professor in Residence, Director of Anxiety Disorders Research, and holds the West Innovation Chair at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, as well as the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA. As a physician-scientist and educator, Dr. Khalsa is clinically active and supervises residents in the treatment of anxiety disorders at the UCLA Anxiety Disorders Clinic. As founding Director of the Healthy Hearts Behavioral Medicine Program, an interdisciplinary endeavor with the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center focused on addressing the mental health needs of individuals with heart conditions, he specializes in treating anxiety and mood disorders in individuals with cardiac arrhythmias. He additionally serves as an associate editor for Biological Psychology and JMIR Mental Health. Dr. Khalsa’s research utilizes a wide range of methodologies, including pharmacological interventions, non-pharmacological treatments, functional neuroimaging, electroencephalography, and computational modeling. His work centers on understanding how the brain perceives bodily signals during stress, with the aim of identifying modifiable treatment targets for disorders marked by heightened anxiety, such as anxiety and mood disorders. By developing clinical tests to identify these targets in individual patients, Dr. Khalsa's research aims to create neuroscience-based therapies that alleviate symptoms and improve the quality of life for individuals suffering from mental illness.