Female sweet likers have enhanced cross-modal interoceptive abilities

Taste hedonics and interoception (sense of internal state of the body; IC) drive ingestive decision-making while the same brain areas mediate both gustatory and IC processes. Yet, no research has tested whether individual variation in IC abilities relates to sweet liking. Here, young female sweet likers (SLs; n=32) and sweet dislikers (SDs; n=34) completed a bimodal IC protocol. Cardiac IC was determined by a heartbeat detection (HDe) and a heartbeat discrimination (HDi) task accompanied by confidence ratings. To test gastric IC, a water load task was used. Participants’ motivational state and behavioural characteristics were also assessed. SLs performed better than SDs on both HDe and HDi tasks independently of anxiety, depression, and alexithymia. No differences in IC awareness and subjective IC measures were found. With gastric IC, SLs were more sensitive to stomach distention, ingesting less water than SDs to reach satiety but more for fullness. SLs scored higher on mindful and intuitive eating. Our data suggest that SL phenotype may reflect enhanced responsiveness to internal cues. Using sweet liking phenotypes to identify predisposition to poorer IC abilities and hence to food choices beyond internal needs seems promising.