Inside interoception: The hidden sense of how you feel inside
Inside interoception: The hidden sense of how you feel inside
洞察内感受：感知内在状态的隐秘感官
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Your brain lives in the dark space of your skull. Yet it knows when the wind lifts the hairs on your skin, when your heart is racing, when your gut tightens with fear. It’s also, right now, predicting what you’ll read next as your eyes move across this page. It’s picking up signals that help it make sense of what’s happening around you and prepare you to act if you need to stay safe. You aren’t usually aware that your brain is doing all that. 你的大脑居住在颅骨的黑暗空间里。然而，它却能感知到风吹动皮肤汗毛的瞬间、心跳加速的时刻，以及因恐惧而紧缩的肠胃。此时此刻，当你的双眼扫过页面时，它甚至还在预测你接下来会读到什么。它不断捕捉信号，帮助大脑理解周围发生的一切，并在你需要确保安全时做好行动准备。通常情况下，你并不会意识到大脑正在进行这一切。
Our senses take in information at a staggering rate—roughly 11 million bits flood in every second from our skin, eyes, ears, and more. That’s nearly three paperback novels’ worth of data every second. Only a sliver reaches our conscious awareness. Researchers estimate that our conscious minds can process roughly 10 to 60 bits of information per second, about the rate at which you’re reading this sentence. That’s a ratio of about one conscious bit to hundreds of thousands of unconscious bits. And that’s a mercy. 我们的感官以惊人的速度接收信息——皮肤、眼睛、耳朵等器官每秒涌入约 1100 万比特的数据。这相当于每秒钟处理近三本平装书的信息量。其中只有极小一部分能进入我们的意识。研究人员估计，我们的意识每秒只能处理约 10 到 60 比特的信息，大约就是你阅读这句话的速度。这意味着意识与潜意识处理的信息比例约为 1 比数十万。这其实是一种仁慈。
As Moriah Thomason, a neuroscientist at NYU Langone, says, “Thank goodness we’re built like this. There’s a layer of what we have access to in conscious awareness. And then we have a right-under-the-surface amount. There is only a certain amount we are meant to ‘hold in mind’ in order to function successfully.” 正如纽约大学朗格尼医学中心的神经科学家莫里亚·托马森（Moriah Thomason）所言：“谢天谢地，我们是这样被构建的。我们能通过意识获取的信息仅占一层，而另一层则隐藏在表面之下。为了能正常运作，我们只需要‘记住’一定量的信息即可。”
What you are aware of: Your stomach growling when you’re hungry. Your palms sweating before you speak in public. The breath you just took, if you pay attention to it. Even your heartbeat, which some people can sense from the inside without feeling their pulse in their wrist. Scientists have a word for how we sense ourselves from the inside: interoception. 你所能意识到的：饥饿时肠胃的咕噜声；公开演讲前手心的出汗；如果你留意的话，还有你刚刚吸入的那一口气。甚至包括你的心跳——有些人无需触摸手腕脉搏，就能从内部感知到它。科学家们用一个词来描述这种从内部感知自身的能力：内感受（Interoception）。
The term was coined in 1906 by the British neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington. For most of the 20th century it remained largely confined to textbooks. Today, thanks to a 2021 Nobel Prize and new tools that can map the interoceptive system across the body, the study of this facility is suddenly quite hot. As researchers decode how signals move between body and brain, a clearer picture is starting to take shape—with implications for how we understand and treat conditions from obesity to chronic pain to anxiety. 这个术语由英国神经生理学家查尔斯·谢灵顿（Charles Sherrington）于 1906 年提出。在 20 世纪的大部分时间里，它主要局限于教科书。如今，得益于 2021 年的诺贝尔奖以及能够绘制全身内感受系统图谱的新工具，对这一功能的研究突然变得炙手可热。随着研究人员解码信号在身体与大脑之间的传递方式，一幅更清晰的图景正逐渐浮现——这将影响我们对肥胖、慢性疼痛和焦虑等疾病的理解与治疗。
The field began to take off in the 1990s. In 1994, the neurologist Antonio Damasio published a book with a pointed title: Descartes’ Error. He challenged the historical separation of thinking and feeling, arguing that our ability to choose and act is driven by feelings, and those feelings in turn are shaped by the body’s signals, such as your gut clenching or your skin going clammy. 该领域始于 20 世纪 90 年代。1994 年，神经学家安东尼奥·达马西奥（Antonio Damasio）出版了一本标题鲜明的书：《笛卡尔的错误》（Descartes’ Error）。他挑战了历史上将“思考”与“感受”割裂开来的观点，认为我们的选择和行动能力是由感受驱动的，而这些感受又受到身体信号（如肠胃紧缩或皮肤湿冷）的影响。
When we lose that connection between feeling and thinking, as one of Damasio’s patients did after surgery to treat a brain tumor, we may still be able to reason with perfect logic about the pros and cons of traveling on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. But without the emotional signals that help us predict what a choice will feel like, our reason spins and circles, and we cannot decide. 当我们失去这种感受与思考之间的联系时（正如达马西奥的一位脑肿瘤手术后的患者那样），我们或许仍能以完美的逻辑推理出周二或周三出行的利弊。但如果没有那些帮助我们预测选择后果的情感信号，我们的理性就会陷入死循环，最终无法做出决定。
A contemporary of Damasio’s, the neuroscientist Bud Craig, spent his career asking one question: How do you feel? He charted how the brain builds an inner map of the body and updates it in real time every moment you are alive. Think of the captain’s bridge on the USS Enterprise, where a live map displays the status of the ship’s critical systems: oxygen levels, energy availability, hull integrity, shield strength. Another set of indicators senses things outside the ship: asteroid belts, enemy ships, radiation, life signs, and spatial anomalies not yet understood. 与达马西奥同时代的神经科学家巴德·克雷格（Bud Craig）毕生都在探究一个问题：你感觉如何？他绘制了大脑如何构建身体内部地图，并在你活着的每一刻实时更新它的过程。想象一下“进取号”星舰的舰桥，那里有一张实时地图显示着飞船关键系统的状态：氧气水平、能源储备、船体完整性、护盾强度。另一组指标则感知飞船外部的情况：小行星带、敌舰、辐射、生命迹象以及尚未被理解的空间异常。
Your brain, only about the size of your two fists pressed together, creates a map like this for your entire body, along with a map of the outside world, from data streaming in through your five senses. Together, they feed into your brain’s working model of you in the world, now and across time—where you are, who you are, your expectations for what’s about to happen (based on everything you know), and what all that means for you. 你的大脑仅有两只拳头并拢大小，却能通过五感涌入的数据，为你整个身体构建这样一张地图，同时还构建了一张外部世界的地图。它们共同汇入大脑中关于“你”在世界中的工作模型——无论是在当下还是在时间长河中——包括你在哪里、你是谁、你对即将发生之事的预期（基于你所知的一切），以及这一切对你意味着什么。
When someone asks “How are you doing?” we consult our maps and report back on our status. We might say we’re happy, depleted, anxious, or energetic. These feelings are always a braid of emotional and physical sensations. They’re what your interoceptive navigational system serves up to your awareness when you sense yourself from the inside. 当有人问“你最近怎么样？”时，我们会查阅这些地图并报告我们的状态。我们可能会说自己很开心、精疲力竭、焦虑或充满活力。这些感受始终是情感与身体感觉的交织。当你从内部感知自己时，这就是你的内感受导航系统呈现给你的意识内容。
As we grow up, we learn to interpret what these sensations mean—interpretations that, in turn, can alter our physiology, emotions, and behavior. Research by the psychologist Alia Crum shows that people who embrace a “stress is enhancing” mindset produce more growth hormones than people who have a “stress is debilitating” mindset. They also experience more positive emotions and greater cognitive flexibility. 随着成长，我们学会了解读这些感觉的含义——而这些解读反过来又会改变我们的生理、情绪和行为。心理学家阿莉亚·克拉姆（Alia Crum）的研究表明，持有“压力是有益的”心态的人，比持有“压力是有害的”心态的人会产生更多的生长激素。他们也会体验到更多的积极情绪，并拥有更强的认知灵活性。
Language also matters. We learn words for the textures of our feelings—words that then shape how we feel and act. People low in emotional “granularity”—as the psychologist Marc Brackett calls the ability to distinguish between closely related feelings—react more impulsively under stress and are less able to find meaning in difficult experiences. 语言也很重要。我们学习描述感受质感的词汇——这些词汇进而塑造了我们的感受和行为方式。心理学家马克·布拉基特（Marc Brackett）将区分细微情感差别的能力称为情感“颗粒度”。颗粒度较低的人在压力下反应更冲动，也更难在困难的经历中找到意义。
But mindsets and emotional intelligence are malleable. We can learn that “anxious” is different from “terrified,” and we can even reframe how we interpret our body’s sensations. Instead of thinking of the butterflies in our bellies as annoying, we can welcome them as our body’s way of preparing us for a peak performance. 但心态和情商是可以塑造的。我们可以学会区分“焦虑”与“恐惧”，甚至可以重构我们解读身体感觉的方式。与其认为肚子里的“蝴蝶乱飞”（紧张感）令人烦恼，不如将其视为身体为我们迎接巅峰表现所做的准备。
Scientists have long understood that the interoceptive information informing these lived experiences travels via two major systems: nerves and humors (blood and lymph). Now they’re actively studying a third system—the “interstitium,” a network of fluid-filled spaces woven throughout the body’s connective fascia that may also play a role in communication. But until recently, scientific understanding of this interoceptive system looked like a high-level sche 科学家们早就知道，为这些生活体验提供信息的内感受信息是通过两大系统传递的：神经系统和体液（血液和淋巴）。现在，他们正在积极研究第三个系统——“间质”（interstitium），这是一个遍布全身结缔组织筋膜的充满液体的空间网络，它可能也在信息交流中发挥作用。但直到最近，科学界对这一内感受系统的理解还仅仅停留在高层架构层面。