Differences in ongoing thought between autistic and non-autistic adults.

Autistic people may be distinguishable from non-autistic individuals in the content and modality of their thoughts. Such differences potentially underlie both psychological vulnerability and strengths, motivating the need to better understand autistic thought patterns. In non-clinical undergraduates, a recent study found that autistic traits were associated with thinking more in words than images.

Interoceptive Mechanisms and Emotional Processing.

Interoception, the sensing of internal bodily signals, is intricately linked with the experience of emotions. Various theoretical models of emotion incorporate aspects of interoception as a fundamental component alongside higher-order processes such as the appraisal of internal signals guided by external context. Interoception can be delineated into different dimensions, which include the nature of afferent signals, the accuracy with which they can be sensed, their neural processing, and the higher-order interpretation of these signals.

"I'm Trying to Reach Out, I'm Trying to Find My People": A Mixed-Methods Investigation of the Link Between Sensory Differences, Loneliness, and Mental Health in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults.

Background: Rates of loneliness are substantially higher among autistic compared with nonautistic individuals. This observation refutes the persistent stereotype that autistic individuals are not motivated to seek meaningful social relationships. More plausibly, social environments systematically exclude people with higher levels of sensory differences, impeding on opportunities for autistic individuals to form meaningful relationships.

Understanding the mechanisms of fatigue in multiple sclerosis: linking interoception, metacognition and white matter dysconnectivity.

One of the most prominent symptoms in multiple sclerosis is pathological fatigue, often described by sufferers as one of the most debilitating symptoms, affecting quality of life and employment. However, the mechanisms of both, physical and cognitive fatigue in multiple sclerosis remain elusive. Here, we use behavioural tasks and quantitative MRI to investigate the neural correlates of interoception (the ability to sense internal bodily signals) and metacognition (the ability of the brain to assess its own performance), in modulating cognitive fatigue.