Previous research suggested increased cardiac interoceptive accuracy after 24-h food-deprivation by means of the heartbeat tracking task. The present study investigated if 16-h of voluntary fasting shows similar effects and whether changes in interoceptive accuracy are accompanied by changes in autonomic function. In two independent within-subjects studies two measures of interoceptive accuracy, the heartbeat tracking task and the heartbeat discrimination task were applied. In study 1 (n = 24) and study 2 (n = 72) vagally-mediated HRV increases and heart rate decreases were observed. Stronger effects of fasting on vagally-mediated HRV went along with a higher interoceptive accuracy increase in the heartbeat tracking task. Furthermore, the fasting associated changes in interoceptive accuracy in both tasks were significantly associated, suggesting that these tasks are suitable to track changes in cardiac interoception. Taken together, fasting of 16-h might be suitable to increase participants’ parasympathetic efference, thereby facilitating interoception.

先前的研究表明，在 24 小时禁食后，通过心跳跟踪任务可以提高心脏内感受的准确性。本研究调查了 16 小时的自愿禁食是否显示出类似的效果，以及内感受准确性的变化是否伴随着自主神经功能的变化。在两个独立的受试者内部研究中，应用了两种内感受准确度的测量方法，即心跳跟踪任务和心跳辨别任务。在研究 1 ( n  = 24) 和研究 2 ( n = 72) 观察到迷走神经介导的 HRV 增加和心率降低。禁食对迷走神经介导的 HRV 的更强影响伴随着心跳跟踪任务中更高的内感受精度增加。此外，这两项任务中与禁食相关的内感受准确度变化显着相关，表明这些任务适合跟踪心脏内感受的变化。总之，禁食 16 小时可能适合增加参与者的副交感神经，从而促进内感受。