A closer look
Being heavily in tune with your own body sounds like a wellness guru's ultimate dream, but for your mental health, it can quickly become a nightmare. Interoceptive accuracy is the biological ability to perceive internal bodily sensations, like a heartbeat or digestion. Neuroscientist Hugo Critchley mapped the brains of people who could effortlessly count their own heartbeats without checking a pulse and found they had highly reactive insular cortices. Because their brain is constantly amplifying internal physical noise, they interpret perfectly normal biological shifts as impending doom, making them significantly more vulnerable to spiraling into devastating panic attacks.
