THE EMBODIED SELF Sottotitolo - The body self-consciousness in autobiographical memory

Memory is one of the most studied cognitive domains in neuropsychology and it was widely demonstrated how it is critical for human functioning: in particular, the literature showed autobiographical memory to be crucial for the creation and maintenance of a self-identity. In addition, previous literature showed how Interoception influences cognitive and affective processes, beyond homeostasis. Nevertheless, literature has generally neglected to investigate the impact of Interoception on Autobiographical memory (AM). Indeed this project constitutes, to our knowledge, the first scientific study analysing the relationship between Interoceptive Sensibility and Autobiographical memory, controlling for public memories in a healthy population. We carried out this study through an experimental protocol web-based: two instruments, a novel modified version of the minimal instruction autobiographical memory test and a body perception questionnaire, were used to measure respectively autobiographical memory and interoception sensibility. While we used other two questionnaires as control measures to exclude participants who showed above cut-off levels of anxiety or depression. The most interesting result is an effect of the interoceptive sensibility on the emotional valence of the recalled autobiographic memory engrams: individuals reporting high interoceptive abilities had a higher number of positive valenced memories in the autobiographical condition compared to the public one. In conclusion, with this study, we provided evidence supporting the existence of an influence of interoceptive sensibility on autobiographical memory. Keywords: Autobiographical memory – Self Identity - Interoception – Body self-consciousness – Viscerosensory Insula