One idea expressed in some previous work was that by way of information
they provide about where the body starts and ends, about what
is felt and where, SPSs may contribute to creating and maintaining selfconsciousness.
This function would be even more noticeable during
periods of rest where some parts of the body are not in contact with
any stimulus, and where attention is free to explore the body [4,27].
Furthermore, since perceiving SPSs means being aware of signals originating
in the body, the idea emerged that SPSs are components of
interoception in its broad sense [47,48]. Thus, this study aimed to uncover
the relationship between interoception and the perception of
SPSs. To that end, we used accuracy in a heartbeat perception task
[34] as an index of general interoceptive sensitivity [16,18,38] and examined whether
it determined performance in an SPSs task. Our results
back up the hypothesis that SPSs are closely linked to interoception, but,
in addition, they provide evidence that goes beyond the simple linear
logic that people with better interoceptive sensitivity perceive SPSs
better.