Iuss Cognitive Neuroscience Center - ICoN
Iuss Cognitive Neuroscience Seminar

"ALLOSTATIC INTEROCEPTION IN NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES"

Speaker: Agustín Ibañez 
Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile, Chile;
Cognitive Neuroscience Center (CNC), Universidad de San Andrés & CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
Global Brain Health Institute, University of California, San Francisco, USA;
Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland. 

Abstract: 
Recent allostatic-interoceptive predictive coding theories propose that efficient regulation of the internal milieu is necessary to correctly anticipate environmental challenges. These theories are based on neurocognitive models of allostatic load and interoceptive processes, dimensions compromised in multiple neurodegenerative diseases and convergently affected in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Moreover, recent links between interoception, emotion and social cognition in bvFTD and other conditions suggest a critical dimensional role of allostatic interoceptive overload in the physiopathology of neurodegeneration. Based on these antecedents, I will propose the hypothesis that bvFTD may be characterized by an imbalance of the predictive allostatic-interoceptive priors, with manifestations across psychological, cerebral, cardiocerebral and peripheral dimensions. Further, I will propose a set of theory-driven predictions, which could be subsumed into a dimensional framework integrating neurocognitive and physiological markers into a multimodal assessment of allostatic interoceptive overload. Under such framework, cognitive and behavioral impairments of bvFTD would be predicted by structural and connectivity deficits among critical allostatic interoceptive brain’ hubs, altered cardiocerebral activity (i.e., heart evoked potential), and other measures of allostatic overload, jointly yielding meaningful associations with clinical manifestations and social cognition impairments. I will present preliminary evidence supporting this approach. Such framework could help to further understand the hallmarks behavioral and physiopathological dysregulations of dementia within a predictive coding account, strengthening clinical models integrating its neurological and psychiatric manifestations.

The seminar will be also available via Zoom at: 
https://iusspavia.zoom.us/my/br.saladelcamino
   
Info: chiara.cerami@iusspavia.it  
Poster program