Specific awareness of heart functioning during pleasure states is positively correlated with the ability to voluntarily raise heart rate.
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Pleasure-specific cardiac awareness was associated with voluntary HR control; hypothesis-generating for interoception research, should not yet change practice.
Relationships between subscores of the Autonomic Perception Questionnaire and ability to raise and lower heart rate voluntarily were examined in 40 subjects. Subscores which reflected autonomic awareness in anxiety and pleasure states were not predictive of degree of cardiac control, while the subscore specific to reported awareness of heart functioning during pleasure states only was positively correlated with ability to raise heart rate.
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Kirk R. Blankstein (1975) studied this question.
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