Bogaerts, Katleen, Walentynowicz, Marta, Van Den Houte, Maaike et al. · Psychosomatic medicine · 2021 · DOI
This study tested a new questionnaire called the ISAQ that measures how aware people are of signals from their own body—like heart rate, breathing, or pain—and how much attention they pay to uncomfortable bodily sensations. Researchers compared how people with ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, panic disorder, and other conditions scored on this questionnaire compared to healthy people. They found that people with ME/CFS and fibromyalgia were more sensitive to neutral body signals and paid more attention to unpleasant sensations than healthy controls.
This study provides a validated tool for measuring interoceptive awareness in ME/CFS patients, which may help researchers understand whether altered body-signal perception contributes to symptom burden or perpetuation in ME/CFS. The finding that ME/CFS patients show heightened sensitivity to both neutral and unpleasant body sensations suggests interoceptive dysregulation may be relevant to symptom amplification in the condition.
This study does not establish whether increased interoceptive sensitivity causes ME/CFS symptoms or results from them (direction of causality remains unclear). The questionnaire measures self-reported interoception, which may differ from objective interoceptive ability. Cross-sectional design prevents conclusions about whether interoceptive changes precede, accompany, or follow ME/CFS onset.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Bogaerts, Katleen, Walentynowicz, Marta, Van Den Houte, Maaike, Constantinou, Elena, & Van den Bergh, Omer (2021). The Interoceptive Sensitivity and Attention Questionnaire: Evaluating Aspects of Self-Reported Interoception in Patients With Persistent Somatic Symptoms, Stress-Related Syndromes, and Healthy Controls.. Psychosomatic medicine. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000001038
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-bogaerts-2021-interoceptive-sensitivity,
author = {Bogaerts, Katleen and Walentynowicz, Marta and Van Den Houte, Maaike and Constantinou, Elena and Van den Bergh, Omer},
title = {The Interoceptive Sensitivity and Attention Questionnaire: Evaluating Aspects of Self-Reported Interoception in Patients With Persistent Somatic Symptoms, Stress-Related Syndromes, and Healthy Controls.},
journal = {Psychosomatic medicine},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.1097/PSY.0000000000001038},
note = {PubMed: 34840287},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/bogaerts-2021-interoceptive-sensitivity},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/bogaerts-2021-interoceptive-sensitivity
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