Limitations and conclusions
Although moderate to large effects of attention and arousal on the HEP, and a moderate association between HEP amplitude and the heartbeats count have been observed (Coll et al., 2021), a limitation of the present study is that the HEP amplitude could not be correlated with the performance at the heartbeats counting task. This latter was not performed to prevent the effects of hypnotizability-related attentional abilities on the HEP amplitude (Raz, 2005). In summary, in highs, who display lower behaviorally assessed interoceptive accuracy than lows (Rosati et al., 2021), the HEP amplitude at parietal sites receiving insular information is lower than in lows. It increases in highs during hypnosis, which is associated with pre-eminent internally directed attention (Demertzi et al., 2015) and reduced activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (Deeley et al., 2012; Demertzi et al., 2011; Jiang et al., 2017; McGeown et al., 2009). In contrast, lows decrease their HEP amplitude possibly due to disengagement from the hypnosis task.
The reported findings provide further support to the view that hypnotizability is relevant to general aspects of life rather than merely to the proneness to accept suggestions (Diolaiuti et al., 2020; Ibanez.Marcelo et al., 2019; Santarcangelo & Carli 2021; Santarcangelo et al., 2016; Spina et al., 2020). Interoception, in fact, influences exteroceptive perception, contributes to self-consciousness, which includes bodily awareness, ownership and the experience of self as a global unity stable in time (Park & Blanke, 2019a), and could influence emotional experience and behavior (Parrinello et al., 2022).