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The Temporal Aspect of Bodily Experiences of Emotions: Where do you Feel the First Sensation?

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Abstract

Recently, bodily sensation mapping has been used to identify patterns in the physical sensations elicited by emotions. In addition, it is important to add a temporal aspect to deepen the interoceptive study of emotions. The present study sought to explore the first perceived sensation. The study sample included 34 mindfulness practitioners and 64 non-practitioners to analyze any differences in their perceptions of emotion. Participants were instructed to evoke five basic emotions (fear, disgust, anger, sadness, joy), and as soon as they became aware of where they felt the emotions start to emerge, were instructed to interrupt the observation and to indicate the region in a diagram of a human figure. Overall, the groups did not differ in the body regions identified for each emotion. Regarding emotions, Cochran’s Q test revealed a significant difference in the distributions of regions within each emotion. Pairwise comparisons showed that the main regions mentioned across emotions were the head and the chest. For fear, only the chest was cited, while for disgust, the neck/throat and the lower part of the head were most frequently mentioned. These regions differed significantly from other regions, with statistical significance levels varying some with p < 0.05, others with p < 0.005, and some with p < 0.001. These findings align with studies on body sensation maps of emotions, where these regions correspond to those perceived with the greatest increase in activity. These regions may be crucial points for intervention during the course of an emotion.

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Data availability

The Brazilian Portuguese version of the MAIA-2 can be downloaded from the official website www.osher.ucsf.edu/maia. The study and its analysis were pre-registered in Open Science Framework, available at the link: https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gdsxv. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the Figshare repositor, https://figshare.com/s/2ee712dc98c0e199aca3

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Funding

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, 141745/2019-3, Ricardo Carvalho.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychobiology, Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo, Rua Botucatu, 862, 1O. Andar, Vila Clementino, São Paulo, SP, CEP 04023062, Brazil

    Ricardo Ramos de Carvalho, Claudia Berlim de Mello, Ana Regina Noto & José Roberto Leite

  2. Department of Cardiology, Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo, Rua Napoleão de Barros, 715, Térreo, Vila Clementino, São Paulo, SP, CEP 04024-002, Brazil

    Isadora Salvador Rocco

Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation were performed by Ricardo Ramos de Carvalho, Claudia Berlim de Mello, Ana Regina Noto, and José Roberto Leite; data collection were performed by Ricardo Ramos de Carvalho; and analysis were performed by Ricardo Ramos de Carvalho, Claudia Berlim de Mello, and Isadora Salvador Rocco. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ricardo Ramos de Carvalho and Claudia Berlim de Mello. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ricardo Ramos de Carvalho.

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Conflicts of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical approval

All procedures were approved by the Ethics Committee of the Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo—project grant (no. 0211/2021) in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration.

Informed consent

Volunteers agreed with the informed consent form (ICF).

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de Carvalho, R.R., de Mello, C.B., Rocco, I.S. et al. The Temporal Aspect of Bodily Experiences of Emotions: Where do you Feel the First Sensation?. Psychol Stud (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-025-00834-5

  • Received
  • Accepted
  • Published
  • DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-025-00834-5

Keywords

  • Emotions
  • Feelings
  • Bodily maps of emotions
  • Mindfulness
  • Interoception

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