Speaker
Description
Corporeal awareness, namely the consciousness of one’s body and sensations, is influenced by internal and external cues that interplay to create a coherent self-representation. Specifically, interoceptive signals (physiological internal signals), are crucial in shaping our perception of the body and processing specific sensations, such as pain. Part One of this thesis explores the influence of internal signals on bodily awareness in women. Crucially, interoception in chronic pain conditions affecting women has mainly been investigated through self-report questionnaires or cardiac
interoceptive tasks. To address this gap, Study 1 examines how women with endometriosis, compared to healthy controls, process signals from three body districts: cardiac, gastric, and urinary. Since no non-invasive interoceptive task for bladder stimuli exists, a novel urinary interoceptive task is proposed to examine signal processing in chronic pelvic pain conditions, as these inputs originate from the pelvic area, the focus of these conditions. Study 2 investigates the role of breath, another interoceptive signal, in shaping corporeal awareness in healthy women, using the ‘Embreathment’ illusion, a virtual reality paradigm previously validated in men. Part Two focuses on how
exteroceptive cues, particularly visual cues through virtual reality, shape women’s corporeal awareness and behaviours. Study 3 describes how embodying a female role model (i.e., Angela Merkel) in virtual reality can alter women’s implicit and explicit attitudes towards themselves, discussing the effects of different kinds of exposure: priming (i.e., exposure to a role model through an image), and embodiment (i.e., incorporating an avatar and acting accordingly to its bodily features, “Proteus Effect”). Study 4 explores whether exposure to a successful female model can support
women’s performance during a stressful virtual reality task (public speaking) by improving participants’ performance, while also modulating stress-related physiological and hormonal signals (HRV, cortisol). Finally, the potential applications of these research lines in clinical and social contexts are discussed.
