# Inflammation Changes Associated with Interoception Changes following Vibroacoustically Augmented Breath Focused Mindfulness for Dissociation

> **NIH NIH R01** · EMORY UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $111,315

## Abstract

Dissociation is a multifaceted, transdiagnostic, and disabling phenomenon that involves
detachment from the self or surroundings. It is prevalent in trauma-exposed people with
posttraumatic stress disorder, occurs in other disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety), and is a
barrier to recovery in first-line treatments. Dissociation is characterized by disruptions in body
awareness, or interoception, and some research suggests that highly dissociative individuals
also have higher inflammatory tone. Mindfulness-based meditative practices, including breath-
focused mindfulness meditation (BFM), are designed to enhance interoceptive awareness to
physiological signals (breath) and are also shown to reduce inflammation. However,
mindfulness is often a difficult task for dissociative people, who experience disruptions in body
agency and are unable to access or trust body signals. Exteroceptive feedback enhances
interoceptive awareness and body agency in experimental studies and may similarly facilitate
changes in inflammation in conjunction with mindfulness interventions. As such, the goal of this
supplement is to examine potential changes in inflammation with changes in interoception in
dissociative traumatized patients via BFM augmented with exteroceptive feedback. This is
delivered by a unique device that vibrates in concert with respiration, yielding non-ignorable
mechanoreceptor reactivity to breathing. Using a stimulus-driven mechanism, our device is
expected to enhance body agency and efficiently engage attention and interoception networks.
We will recruit 45 trauma-exposed people with clinically significant dissociation symptoms,
divided in four equal groups to yield a 2x2 (BFM or non-judgmental awareness x with or without
vibroacoustic stimulation) design. All participants attend 8 sessions of their assigned
intervention. We will collect blood samples for inflammatory assays pre and post-intervention (2
time points) to examine change in inflammation with interoception, measured clinically as well
as during an interoception task during fMRI pre- and post-intervention. We will examine: Aim 1)
whether changes in inflammatory markers, including c-reactive protein, interleukin-1 and -6, and
tumor necrosis α, are significant from pre- to post intervention; Aim 2) whether changes in
inflammatory markers are associated with change in interoception (measured clinically and via
neural network response), and whether BFM with exteroceptive feedback significantly
moderates these changes; Aim 3) whether change in inflammation is associated with change in
dissociation, and whether BFM with exteroceptive feedback significantly moderates these
changes.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10632723
- **Project number:** 3R01AT011267-02S2
- **Recipient organization:** EMORY UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** NEGAR FANI
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $111,315
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2021-02-01 → 2026-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10632723

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10632723, Inflammation Changes Associated with Interoception Changes following Vibroacoustically Augmented Breath Focused Mindfulness for Dissociation (3R01AT011267-02S2). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10632723. Licensed CC0.

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