Neuroscience · Interoception · Mental Health
Paul W. Savoca
Exploring how the nervous system senses the body, and how internal signals shape emotion, development, and health.
Early life adversity
Interoception & Early Life Adversity
This line of work aims to understand how early-life adversity (ELA) impacts individual differences in interoception, and how these differences may underlie risk for mental and physical health.
Pregnancy
Interoception & Pregnancy
Our theoretical work suggests the physiological, hormonal, and neural changes of pregnancy may make it a sensitive period for interoceptive function — heightened to adapt to metabolic demands, as supported by self-report and in-lab task-based measures.
Menstrual cycle
Interoception & Menstrual Health
The Cyclic Hormones and Interoception with Repeated Profiling (CHIRP) study is a longitudinal dense-sampling study examining how natural hormonal fluctuations across the menstrual cycle interact with self-report, task-based, and neural measures of interoception.
Recent Publications
2025
Exploring the relationships between discrimination, alexithymia, and anxiety in women
P.W. Savoca, A. Fabian, S.M. Esfand, B.L. Callaghan · Stigma and Health
2025
P.W. Savoca, L.M. Glynn, M.M. Fox, M.C. Richards, B.L. Callaghan · Archives of Women’s Mental Health
2024
Interoception in pregnancy: Implications for peripartum depression
P.W. Savoca, L.M. Glynn, M.M. Fox, M.C. Richards, B.L. Callaghan · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews
Paul W. Savoca 