Posted on November 4, 2024
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Interoception and Its impact on Development, Learning, and Behavior
The Impact of Our Internal Sensory System
Interoception is the sense of one’s self and the brain’s processing of the signals coming from our bodies. The feelings of hunger, thirst, body temperature, digestion, and fatigue are just some signals that come from our internal world to the brain.
The purpose of this incredible system is survival and regulation. Unlike the other senses, the sense of interoception provides the brain with information about our internal systems only. It is primal, basic, and far too often, overlooked even in developmental approaches.
The Mind – Body Connection
First, a super quick breakdown of the nervous systems:
Feelings of hunger, thirst, needing to use the bathroom, and feeling your heart pounding after a scare are just a few examples of this mind – body connection. The purpose of interoception is survival. It ensures we eat before getting lightheded, drink before dehydration begins, and either run or fight a threat.
The Vagus Nerve
In addition to the above breakdown of the nervous system a massively important structure for brief review is the vagus nerve, or Cranial Nerve X.
The Vagus nerve begins in the brainstem and runs all the way to the colon with many branches along the way making it the longest nerve in the human body and it is part of the Autonomic nervous system. It is the information superhighway between our internal environments and our brains.
What Happens When This Sensory System is not Integrated?
This sensory system, when not integrated, can be hypo-responsive or hyper-responsive.
When the interoceptive system is hypo-responsive we see sensory seeking “behaviors.” Some examples are:
- Not knowing when bladder is full
- Endless hunger – not feeling full or satiated. Child is continually looking for food
- Not knowing when they are thirsty
- Poor gut motility; not knowing when or how to empty bowels
- Absence of critical oral motor reflexes like gag and swallow
- Having an extremely high pain threshold
When the interoceptive system is hyper-reactive, we see signs of overwhelm and sensory avoiding behaviors. These may include:
- Anxiety
- Outbursts
- Hyper awareness of internal states
- Increased heart rate
- Sleep disturbances
- Intense reactions to hunger, thirst, or pain
- Emotional Dysregulation
When we look at our children holistically, we must include Interoception in our neurodevelopmental approaches to sensory integration. Without this mindset, many of the above issues may be chalked up to behahioral problems and, worst of all, “That’s just DS.”
Ways to Impact Integration of the Interceptive System
Depending on the age of your child, there are many different integrating inputs you can provide during daily routines to impact Interoception Integration.
1. Heavy Work – pushing, pulling, jumping, stomping, and banging are just some activities. Involve the large gross motor muscles of the body, because proprioception is a big influencer of interoception.
2. Massage – Massaging not only muscles, but abdomen and back greatly improves body awareness. This can positively impact sleep if done in the evening by calming down any stress responses resulting in increased heart rate or flight / fight / freeze.
3. Mindfulness – Having a child focus on his or her breaths helps to focus the attention and regulate emotions
4. Stretching / Yoga – Drawing awareness to various muscles in the body
5. Stress Management – What “stress” does a baby have? Overwhelming sensations coming from their internal world.
- If your child is overwhelmed with sensation music with rich base tones and a slow metronome (more on this in an upcoming blog!)
- If your child is hypo-responsive try classical music with a high violin concentration
- If your child is old enough to hum – do it!
An interesting read:
A Few Additional Thoughts:
When we talk about Sensory Integration we must consider the whole body. Children can not tell us their distress of having their heart pound and race in their ears, or feeling insatiably hungry. We must change our mindset to asking questions and looking for answers. Sometimes these questions lead us away from traditional Down Syndrome literature and specialists.
It is too common for a child having an outburst, or running away, or chewing on their hands, or throwing and hitting, to be given a behavioral approach. If a child has difficulty knowing when they are full, they feel ravenously hungry all the time. Dealing with that as a behavior with restricted food, routines, and reinforcements, does not change the fact the child is continuously hungry. How would you feel if you were denied the ability to eat when you felt overwhelmingly hungry? It is the seat of real behavioral problems.
It is also too common for a child with DS who can not feel when they need to go to the bathroom and struggle into older childhood with incontinence, or another who is “sedentary” because of an exaggerated sense of fatigue, be disregarded as “That’s just DS.”
We are the experts on our children. If you have a team, the OT is the specialist to talk to. Ask him or her for ways to address the interoceptive dysregulation as part of a comprehensive sensorimotor integration plan. This doesn’t need to look like exercises or interventions, it can be a snug wrap in a blanket while reading before bed, or a calming massage, or listening to music, or humming, or pushing or pulling during play.
Understanding the impact of interoception as well as how it is impacted is necessary. A child who has an unintegrated primitive reflexes such as startle is continually in flight / fight / freeze. That impacts how they experience their bodies, and how they then process that incoming information for development of things like oculomotor control, motor planning (praxis), and ultimately learning.
Continuing to address these issues as separate is impossible, and sadly, why so many things have become acceptable.
The key is integration. The more organizing and overlapping the inputs, the more frequent and routinized they are, and the more epigenetic influence of environments we create, the more exponential the impact on results.
These can be built into daily routines whether at home, daycare, or school.
Changing our mindset is the first step.
Best,
Geralyn
