Clinical effects of insular damage in humans

Ibáñez, Agustín; Gleichgerrcht, Ezequiel; Manes, Facundo

doi:10.1007/s00429-010-0256-y

Cited by 181 publications

(127 citation statements)

References 130 publications

(145 reference statements)

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“…The insula was modulated by velocity only when the observed touch was of a social nature (a hand stroking skin), whereas responses to a nonsocial transitive touch scenario (a hand stroking water) were not modulated by stimulus speed in a CT-like manner. Insular cortex integrates tactile information with that from other modalities, including vision (for review, see Ibañez et al, 2010). Such integration of somatosensory with visual information pertaining to the body may account for the posterior insula's velocity-specific sensitivity to the video stimuli in both experiments.…”

Section: Social Touch Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vicarious Responses to Social Touch in Posterior Insular Cortex Are Tuned to Pleasant Caressing Speeds

Morrison

Björnsdotter²,

Olausson³

2011

Journal of Neuroscience

251

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Background. Affective touch carries strong significance for social mammals, including humans. Gentle, dynamic touch of a kind that occurs during social interactions is preferentially encoded by a distinct neural pathway involving tactile C (CT) afferents, a type of unmyelinated afferent nerve found exclusively in hairy skin. CT afferents increase firing when the skin is stroked at a pleasant, caress-like speed of ϳ3 cm/s, and their discharge frequency correlates with the subjective hedonic experience of the caress. In humans, the posterior insula is a cortical target for CT afferents. Since the potential social relevance of affective touch extends to the touch interactions of others, we postulated that information from CT afferents in posterior insular cortex provides a basis for encoding observed caresses. Results. In two experiments, we exploited CT afferents' functionally unique tuning curve for stroking speed, demonstrating that a speed optimal for eliciting CT discharge (3 cm/s) also gives rise to higher BOLD responses in posterior insula than a nonoptimal speed (30 cm/s). When participants viewed videos of others' arms being stroked at CT-optimal versus -nonoptimal speeds, the posterior insula showed a similar response as to directly felt touch. Further, this region's response was specific for social interactions, showing no CT-related modulation for nonsocial dynamic-touch videos. Conclusions. These findings provide direct evidence for a functional relationship between CT signaling and processing in posterior insular cortex. Such selective tuning for CT-optimal signals in insula may allow recognition of the hedonic relevance of a merely observed caress.

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Section: Social Touch Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vicarious Responses to Social Touch in Posterior Insular Cortex Are Tuned to Pleasant Caressing Speeds

Morrison

Björnsdotter²,

Olausson³

2011

Journal of Neuroscience

251

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“…Jackson et al explained that the intensity of physiological afferent stimulation relates directly to the awareness of the urge's strength during a phenomenon such as swallowing, but it is not clear how this phenomenon could be explained by their proposed model. Despite the straightforward relationship between insular cortex and interoceptive conscious awareness (e.g., Ibáñez, Gleichgerrcht, & Manes, 2010), this fact is not explicitly taken into account in terms of the neuronal activity of the cortical and subcortical regions considered in this model. More importantly, even if we consider that urge-for-action could be an unconscious phenomenon, it remains unclear how this model could explain the transition between urges the subject is not conscious of and those of which the subject is consciously aware.…”

Section: Characteristicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…How does this urge-foraction circuit interact with more general circuits of conscious perception? Interoceptive awareness is conceptualized as the capacity of being aware of some specific content of consciousness; that is, of visceral perception (Ibáñez et al, 2010). Therefore, the authors should clarify the way in which interoceptive awareness might be related to other contents of consciousness, such as goal-directed cortical circuits underlying more general conscious perception phenomena.…”

Section: Characteristicmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the functional anatomy of the urge-for-action

Jackson

Parkinson

Kim

et al. 2011

Cognitive Neuroscience

126

130

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Several common neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome (TS), autistic spectrum disorder) are associated with unpleasant bodily sensations that are perceived as an urge for action. Similarly, many of our everyday behaviors are also characterized by bodily sensations that we experience as urges for action. Where do these urges originate? In this paper, we consider the nature and the functional anatomy of "urges-for-action," both in the context of everyday behaviors such as yawning, swallowing, and micturition, and in relation to clinical disorders in which the urge-for-action is considered pathological and substantially interferes with activities of daily living (e.g., TS). We review previous frameworks for thinking about behavioral urges and demonstrate that there is considerable overlap between the functional anatomy of urges associated with everyday behaviors such as swallowing, yawning, and micturition, and those urges associated with the generation of tics in TS. Specifically, we show that the limbic sensory and motor regions--insula and mid-cingulate cortex--are common to all of these behaviors, and we argue that this "motivation-for-action" network should be considered distinct from an "intentional action" network, associated with regions of premotor and parietal cortex, which may be responsible for the perception of "willed intention" during the execution of goal-directed actions.Keywords: Urge; Urge-for-action; Habit; Insula; Tourette syndrome; Action.Many of our everyday behaviors are characterized by bodily sensations that we experience either as an urge or a desire for action. For instance, we may experience a sensation that our bladder is full that is accompanied, to a greater or lesser extent, by an urge or desire to urinate (micturate). In extreme cases, this sense of fullness can be quite uncomfortable and the urge to urinate can be hard to suppress. Similarly, we may experience a tickle in our throat that is associated with an urge to cough or to swallow that can also be difficult to suppress voluntarily.However, not all urges for action are necessarily preceded by bodily sensations of which we are aware. For example, we may suddenly experience a strong urge to yawn, or even find ourselves yawning, without being aware of a sensory "trigger" for the action. In this paper, we consider the nature and the functional anatomy of these "urges-for-action," both in the context of everyday behaviors such as yawning, swallowing, and urinating, and in relation to clinical disorders in which the urgefor-action is considered pathological and substantially COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, 2011, 2 (3-4), Commentaries, and Reply) Correspondence should be addressed to: Stephen R. Jackson, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK. E-mail: stephen.jackson@nottingham.ac.uk This research was supported in part by grants from the Medical Research Council (G0901321), and by the WCU (World Class University) program through the National Research Foundatio...

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“…The insula seems to be a convergence area that integrates internal and external milieus. [42][43][44][45] This cortex uses previous experiences to connect intentions and motivations for a specific cognitive task. The insula integrates modality-specific feeling states and uncertainty with individual preferences and contextual information to produce a global feeling state.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextual social cognition and the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia

Ibáñez¹,

Manes²

2012

Neurology

Self Cite

291

260

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The significance of social situations is commonly context-embedded. Although the role of context has been extensively studied in basic sensory processing or simple stimulus-response settings, its relevance for social cognition is unknown. We propose the social context network model (SCNM), a fronto-insular-temporal network responsible for processing social contextual effects. The SCNM may 1) update the context and use it to make predictions, 2) coordinate internal and external milieus, and 3) consolidate context-target associative learning. We suggest the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) as a specific disorder in which the reported deficits in social cognition (e.g., facial recognition, empathy, decisionmaking, figurative language, theory of mind) can be described as context impairments due to deficits in the SCNM. Disruption of orbitofrontal-amygdala circuit, as well as the frontal, temporal, and insular atrophy in bVFTD, suggests a relationship between context-sensitive social cognition and SCNM. In considering context as an intrinsic part of social cognition, we highlight the need for a situated cognition approach in social cognition research as opposed to an abstract, universal, and decontextualized approach. The assessment of context-dependent social cognition paradigms, the SCNM, and their possible application to neuropsychiatric disorders may provide new insight into bvFTD and other related frontal disorders. Context-dependence effects are pervasive in everyday cognition. When we perceive objects and colors, we always perceive these among other objects and colors. We listen and speak within other word streams, and every atom of meaning emerges from a background of meanings. We perceive facial emotion together with body language, the prosody, and cues from the situation, all of them merged to understand the precise emotional significance. Acting appropriately in social interactions requires the interpretation of explicit and implicit contextual clues that orient our responses toward being polite, to make a joke or point out an irony, to say or not say something. Cognitive science and neuroscience research have evidenced context-dependence effects in similar domains of visual perception, 1-3 emotion, 4 -7 language, 8 -14 and social cognition 15,16 in both normal and neuropsychiatric conditions. But what is context? Simply put, a contextual factor (X) is something that has an effect on a cognitive event and can be determined by observing how that event is affected when X is changed.17 However, this basic definition seems to miss the essence of contextual effects, which is best illustrated with a simple optical illusion. The Ebbinghaus illusion (figure 1A) depicts 2 identical central circles, surrounded by rings of circles. Despite the fact that they are the same size, one circle is perceived as small and the other as big. The contextual information available (the surrounding circles) creates the perception that the center circles are different sizes. Context seems to be more than...

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Clinical effects of insular damage in humans

Cited by 181 publications

References 130 publications

Vicarious Responses to Social Touch in Posterior Insular Cortex Are Tuned to Pleasant Caressing Speeds

Vicarious Responses to Social Touch in Posterior Insular Cortex Are Tuned to Pleasant Caressing Speeds

On the functional anatomy of the urge-for-action

Contextual social cognition and the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia

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