The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Autonomic Neuroscience
Volume 19 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1489225
This article is part of the Research Topic Exploring the interplay of interoception in emotion, cognition, and mental health View all 6 articles
Women with Premenstrual Syndrome Exhibit High Interoceptive Accuracy, but Low Awareness, with Parasympathetic Rebound Responses from Stress
Provisionally accepted- Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is characterized by emotional or physical discomfort that occurs specifically during the luteal phase. However, women with PMS typically do not exhibit abnormalities in serum sex hormone levels or structural anomalies, making it challenging to identify distinct pathological findings unique to PMS. Instead, they may exhibit hypersensitivity to fluctuations in sex hormone levels within the normal range. This study involved experiments conducted in the late luteal phase. The pre-stress baseline state evaluated the effects of PMS on interoception using the Heartbeat Counting Task (HCT) and the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA), and the effects on emotional states using a questionnaire assessing subjective emotions in the late luteal phase. The results indicated that the "PMS group" scored higher on the HCT compared to the "without PMS group," while their MAIA scores were lower. Additionally, the PMS group reported experiencing more negative and stressful states. The findings suggest that women with PMS demonstrate high accuracy in but lower awareness of interoception. This mismatch between "accuracy" and "awareness" may indicate a maladaptive state regarding mental health. The stress-related analysis examined whether the effects of stress on exacerbating PMS include impacts on interoception and the autonomic nervous system (ANS). States before baseline, immediately after, and during stress recovery were evaluated. The results revealed that women in the PMS group exhibited more pronounced negative and stressful states; they showed higher scores on the HCT, with scores progressively increasing as the task was repeated. Regarding ANS indices, no main effect of group was observed, but parasympathetic activity increased during the recovery period compared to the pre-stress baseline. In the degree of changes in parasympathetic activity from the baseline to post-stress and recovery periods, a group-by-time interaction effect was observed. These findings suggest that the PMS group may experience a prolonged rebound effect during the recovery phase following induced stress. In conclusion, women with PMS exhibit a discrepancy between high interoceptive accuracy and low awareness of their sensations. This may contribute to heightened discomfort and suggest that vulnerability to stress, mediated by the parasympathetic nervous system, exacerbates factor for PMS symptoms.
Keywords: Premenstrual syndrome (PMS), Interoceptive Accuracy, Interoceptive Awareness, emotion, stress, Interoception and Mental Health, Autonomic Nerovus System, Premenstrual symptom
Received: 31 Aug 2024; Accepted: 27 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Suzuki and Ohira. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yumiko Suzuki, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.