Congratulations to graduate student Michael Cardenas, who was selected by the organizers of the NIH Annual Investigator Meeting on Interoception Research (Washington DC, Nov. 11, 2023) to give a flash talk presentation! The selection of his abstract for oral presentation comes with a travel award to the conference. Michael will present his recent findings on behavioral changes in an approach-avoidance conflict task induced by interoceptive manipulations. These pharmacological manipulations selectively reduced parasympathetic drive on the viscera. Because these drugs do not cross the blood-brain barrier the most likely explanation for the significant shift in decision-making is a change in the interoceptive afferents that target the neural substrate of the ongoing behavior. This is a direct demonstration that changes in body physiology can significantly bias the cognitive processes that support complex decisions.