Abstract
Anxiety is one of the most common and debilitating mental health
disorders, and is related to changes in interoception (perception of
bodily states). While anxiety is more prevalent in women than men,
gender differences in interoception-anxiety associations are often
overlooked. Here we examined gender-specific relationships between
anxiety and interoception in the breathing domain, utilising multicentre
data pooled from four study sites (N=175; 51% female). State anxiety
scores were quantified via the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety
Inventory, and interoceptive measurements via an inspiratory load
detection task. From this task, breathing-related interoceptive
dimensions of sensitivity, decision bias, metacognitive bias (confidence
in interoceptive decisions), and metacognitive insight (congruency
between performance and confidence) were quantified. Regression analyses
revealed a significant negative relationship between state anxiety and
metacognitive bias (=-0.28; p=0.01) and insight (=-0.09; 95% Highest
Density Interval [HDI] in a hierarchical Bayesian
regression=[-0.18,-0.004]) across the whole sample, while anxiety
did not relate to interoceptive sensitivity nor decision bias. No mean
effects of gender were observed for any interoceptive variables,
however, the relationship between anxiety and metacognitive insight into
breathing perception was driven by women (women: =-0.18;
HDI=[-0.31,-0.05]; men: =0.02; HDI=[-0.12,0.15]) with a
significant interaction effect ( difference=-0.20; HDI=[-0.37,
-0.01]). In summary, anxiety was associated with decreased
metacognitive bias across all participants, while decreased
interoceptive insight was only associated with anxiety in women but not
men. Therefore, treatment programs focusing on interoceptive
metacognitive bias may be useful for all anxiety patients, while
interoceptive insight might represent a specific treatment target for
women with anxiety.