2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Somatic symptoms and distortions of emotion and thought: Cognitive neuroscientific approach

Research Project

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Project/Area Number	20H00108
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Review Section	Medium-sized Section 10:Psychology and related fields
Research Institution	Keio University
Principal Investigator	Umeda Satoshi 慶應義塾大学, 文学部(三田), 教授 (90317272)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	三村將慶應義塾大学, 医学部(信濃町), 特任教授 (00190728) 寺澤悠理慶應義塾大学, 文学部(日吉), 准教授 (30585790)
Project Period (FY)	2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
Keywords	身体症状症 / 自律神経予測処理 / 内受容感覚 / 不安障害 / 感情
Outline of Final Research Achievements	Somatic symptoms disorder, in which patients complain of pain and other physical symptoms even though there are no obvious symptoms of physical disease, actually occurs in a considerable number of cases, and certain types of psychotherapy are found to be effective. However, the mechanisms underlying their symptoms are not fully understood. In the present study, we focused on three factors highly involved in the occurrence of symptoms: predictive autonomic nervous functions at the body level, interoceptive accuracy, and distortion of thought, and examined them in detail. The results showed that similar changes in autonomic nervous activities were observed not only in the situation of actual atmospheric pressure fluctuations, but also in the situation of merely predicting them, and that the degrees of those changes were partially associated with interoception, somatic symptom characteristics and the degree of distortion of thought.
Free Research Field	認知神経科学
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	本研究の成果から，身体症状症には，自律神経活動の変動特性が関与し，それが内受容感覚や特有の認知特性とも関連することが明らかになった．身体症状症を一病態とし捉えることは困難であり，身体特性や内受容感覚の観点からいくつかのパターンに分類されることも示された．さらに，一部の症例では，身体の生理機能が予測的な思考のみによって変化しており，身体化の背景にこうした予測的な認知処理も関与していることが示唆された．本研究の成果は，各個人にどのようなセラピ－が有効であるかを事前に予測する観点を提供するものであり，今後，身体症状症の下位分類を実現する上でも重要な示唆を与えるものと期待される．