{
  "id": 4053912,
  "title": "Heartbeat-Related Bodily Processing Shapes Transition Patterns in Self-Related Spontaneous Thought",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/28/heartbeat-related-bodily-processing-shapes-transition-patterns-in",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-28T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.25.747022v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A study explored whether the body's heartbeat processing, which occurs outside of conscious awareness, influences the flow of spontaneous thoughts. In the experiment, 40 adults engaged in an auditory task while being periodically prompted to report on their thoughts. Sometimes, these prompts arrived 200 milliseconds after the subject detected the beginning of their own heartbeat (sync condition), while other times they were unrelated to the heartbeat (asynch condition). When heartbeats coincided with the prompts in the sync condition, it sometimes led to a temporary slowing of the heartbeat and changes in electrical activity of the heart. The researchers measured how accurately participants could count their own heartbeats, using this as a gauge of their ability to intuitively sense their own heartbeat. They found that people with better cardiac interoceptive accuracy tended to experience a shift in their thoughts when the prompts were synchronized with their heartbeat, moving towards thoughts that were more self-focused and less related to the task at hand. Heartbeat-related electrical activity in the brain showed a related decrease in complexity during such sync periods, although this effect didn't consistently vary based on the type of thought being considered. The overall pattern of thought types people experienced didn't differ much between the sync and asynch conditions. However, when examining how people moved from one type of thought to another, there was a tendency in the sync condition for more frequent transitions involving thoughts that were both tied to internal bodily sensations and related to the self. These results suggest that the body's heartbeat processing could play a role in shaping the stream of spontaneous thoughts, especially for individuals who are better at tuning into their own bodily cues. Essentially, bodily signals might act as an unconscious influence on the flow of thoughts, favoring certain types of thought content and patterns over time.",
  "summary": "Spontaneous thought changes over time, yet the moment-to-moment factors shaping these changes remain poorly understood. We examined whether heartbeat-related bodily processing, operating largely outside explicit awareness, is associated with the organization of ongoing thought. Forty adults performed an auditory attention task with intermittent thought probes in which auditory events were…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}