Neuropsychological patterns following lesions of the anterior insula in a series of forty neurosurgical patients

In the present study we investigated the effects of lesions affecting mainly the anterior insula in a series of 22 patients with lesions in the left hemisphere (LH), and 18 patients with lesions involving the right hemisphere (RH). The site of the lesion was established by performing an overlap of the probabilistic cytoarchitectonic maps of the posterior insula. Here we report the patients\u2019 neuropsychological profile and an analysis of their pre-surgical symptoms. We found that pre-operatory symptoms significantly differed in patients depending on whether the lesion affected the right or left insula and a strict parallelism between the patterns emerged in the pre-surgery symptoms analysis, and the patients\u2019 cognitive profile. In particular, we found that LH patients showed cognitive deficits. By contrast, the RH patients, with the exception of one case showing an impaired performance at the visuo-spatial planning test were within the normal range in performing all the tests. In addition, a sub-group of patients underwent to the post-surgery follow-up examination

Both of us disgusted in My Insula:The common neural basis of seeing and feeling disgust

What neural mechanism underlies the capacity to understand the emotions of others? Does this mechanism involve brain areas normally involved in experiencing the same emotion? We performed an fMRI study in which participants inhaled odorants producing a strong feeling of disgust. The same participants observed video clips showing the emotional facial expression of disgust. Observing such faces and feeling disgust activated the same sites in the anterior insula and to a lesser extent in the anterior cingulate cortex. Thus, as observing hand actions activates the observer's motor representation of that action, observing an emotion activates the neural representation of that emotion. This finding provides a unifying mechanism for understanding the behaviors of others