04/25/2025
Interoceptive awareness is the ability to sense and interpret internal bodily signals. For neurodivergent individuals, interoceptive signals may be experienced differently, and these differences can then influencing eating patterns. The insula is a brain region that processes these signals, and neurodivergent individuals often show variations in brain pathways' functions such as differences in grey matter or cortical thickness. This can shape how someone interacts in their food relationship.�
Gray matter contains the brain’s processing cells; key to interpreting bodily signals and linking them to emotional/behavioral responses:
✨Anterior Insula: Helps transform gut sensations, blood sugar shifts, and heart rate into conscious awareness of hunger or satiety
✨Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC): Supports emotional responses to internal cues
✨Prefrontal Cortex (PFC): Plays a role in decision-making and impulse control
📣Reduced gray matter in the insula or ACC = muted sense of hunger/fullness
📣Increased gray matter in sensory or emotional regulation areas = heightened sensitivity related to eating
White matter consists of the brain’s communication highways, playing a role in integrating bodily signals with thinking, planning, and processing. White matter networks include:�
✨Insula to Prefrontal Cortex: Supports awareness of body signals and making decisions based on them (when to eat)
✨Insula to ACC: Coordinates emotional responses to internal sensations
✨Insula to Somatosensory Cortex: Helps identify where bodily sensations are coming from
In neurodivergent individuals, differences in white matter may contribute to internal sensations that feel muted/difficult to identify, or emotional responses that are intense/misinterpreted. This might look like:
🤷♀️Forgetting to eat or not feeling hungry until physical discomfort sets in
🤷♀️Eating in response to emotional cues without recognizing them as such
🤷♀️Avoiding food due to overwhelming sensory experiences
🤷♀️Relying on external rules or schedules to determine when/what to eat
These patterns aren’t signs of failure– they reflect how the brain uniquely processes information!
