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Science + Technology Monkeys can sense their own heartbeats, an ability tied to mental health, consciousness and memory in humans Published: April 11, 2022 5.10pm EDT Joey Charbonneau, Eliza Bliss-Moreau, University of California, Davis Authors 1. [width170_d] Joey Charbonneau PhD Student in Neuroscience, University of California, Davis 2. [width170_d] Eliza Bliss-Moreau Associate Professor of Psychology, University of California, Davis Disclosure statement The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Partners University of California, Davis University of California, Davis provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. View all partners A graphic showing a monkey looking at a screen with heartbeat lines above. New research indicates that rhesus monkeys show interoception - the ability to sense physiological processes like their own heartbeats. Matthew Verdolivo/UC Davis IET Academic Technology Services, CC BY-ND Email Twitter Facebook LinkedIn WhatsApp Messenger The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Rhesus monkeys have a sense of when their own hearts are beating, according to new research we conducted. Sensing one's own physiological states - like your heartbeat, breathing or blushing cheeks - is called interoception. Some previous research has shown that animals can be trained to do tasks that demonstrate this ability. Decades ago, a team of scientists showed rhesus monkeys could be trained to increase and decrease their heart rates. But an open question has been whether monkeys have an unlearned ability to sense their bodily signals rather than being taught to do so. Both human babies and monkeys look at things that are unexpected or novel for longer amounts of time than they look at things that they expect or are used to seeing. We used a task that relies on this behavior - originally developed to test whether human infants can sense their own heartbeats - to learn whether monkeys also have this ability. Monkeys were shown videos of a bouncing cloud or star that was either in sync or out of sync with their own heartbeats. The moving red dot represents where the monkeys were looking. Credit: Joey Charbonneau. We first got our monkeys to sit in chairs in front of a computer screen and hooked them up to electrocardiograms to monitor their heartbeats. Then we played videos of either a yellow or green cloud bouncing up and down accompanied by beeping sounds. Sometimes we would sync the bouncing and beeping to match the monkey's heartbeat, and at other times they were out of sync. We then used eye trackers to measure how long the monkeys looked at the images. If the monkeys had a sense of their own heartbeats, they would find the in-sync bouncing less interesting and novel than the out-of-sync bouncing and so would spend more time looking at the out-of-sync image. We tested four monkeys and, just like human babies, they looked at the shapes that bounced and sounded out of sync with their heartbeats for significantly longer - nearly three-quarters of a second - than the in-sync images. Additionally, the extent to which our monkeys paid more attention to out-of-sync shapes than in-sync shapes was very close to the difference in human babies. These findings strongly suggest that monkeys have an innate sense of their own heartbeats. In humans, the ability to sense one's own physiological functions is tied to consciousness, memory and a number of mental health disorders. Showing this skill in monkeys opens up many research opportunities. Kathy West/CNPRC, CC BY-ND Why it matters Heartbeat detection tests are the most commonly used to evaluate how aware of bodily signals people are. In humans, this skill is thought to be central to emotional experiences, having a sense of self, memory, knowledge of one's own cognition and even consciousness. Abnormally low or high interoception is related to disorders like anxiety and depression. Our work establishes that monkeys and people have a similar sense of their heartbeats and establishes a method for testing this ability across species. What's next People are well aware of many subtle physiological functions, not just their own heartbeats. But while some people have a very sharp interoceptive ability, a lot of humans are really bad at tasks like the one in the study. Next, our team plans to test whether - like people - some monkeys are better than others at sensing their own heartbeats and whether this translates to other psychological features. Finally, with monkeys, researchers can track animals from womb to tomb, have exquisite experimental control and can carry out detailed anatomical evaluations. This access may allow researchers to determine how interoceptive capacity develops, what features of the social and physical environment shape it and what neural systems underlie it. Establishing this knowledge could further research into the causes behind many health challenges caused when interoception goes awry - including mental health disorders, neurodegenerative disorders and aging. [Climate change, AI, vaccines, black holes and much more. Get The Conversation's best science and health coverage.] * Psychology * Memory * Neuroscience * Brain * Consciousness * Monkeys * Rhesus monkey * Cognition * Interoception * Research Brief * Heart beat Want to write? Write an article and join a growing community of more than 144,600 academics and researchers from 4,349 institutions. 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