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Disturbed interoception in body dysmorphic disorder: A framework for future research

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posted on 2024-07-26, 14:56 authored by Paul M. Jenkinson, Susan RossellSusan Rossell
Body dysmorphic disorder is a severe psychiatric condition characterised by a preoccupation with a perceived appearance flaw or flaws that are typically not observable to others. Although significant advances in understanding the disorder have been made in the past decade, current explanations focus on cognitive, behavioural and visual perceptual disturbances that contribute to the disorder. Such a focus does not consider how perception of the internal body or interoception may be involved, despite (1) clinical observations of disturbed perception of the body in body dysmorphic disorder and (2) disturbed interoception being increasingly recognised as a transdiagnostic factor underlying a wide range of psychopathologies. In this paper, we use an existing model of hierarchical brain function and neural (predictive) processing to propose that body dysmorphic disorder involves defective interoception, with perceived appearance flaws being the result of ‘interoceptive prediction errors’ that cause body parts to be experienced as ‘not just right’. We aim to provide a framework for interoceptive research into body dysmorphic disorder, and outline areas for future research.

Funding

GNT1154651:NHMRC

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PDF (Accepted manuscript)

ISSN

1440-1614

Journal title

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry

Volume

58

Issue

4

Pagination

300-307

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Copyright statement

Copyright © 2023 the authors. This is the author's final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript version, hosted under the terms and conditions of the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Language

eng

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