Anterior insular cortex and emotional awareness

In the paper

“patients with bilateral insular damage still preserve certain aspects of emotional awareness, suggesting that emotional feelings might first emerge from the brainstem and hypothalamus, which are later enriched and refined by the insula”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Abstract reports that feelings remained intact in a patient with bilateral insular destruction and proposes that feeling states arise first subcortically. In “Emotions and Feelings Based on the Brain Stem Complex” (page not provided), the authors include the hypothalamus in that complex and describe insular activity as a more detailed, second-order mapping of feelings. (LLM, conf=0.94)

  cites Damasio et al., 2013 source

In the paper

“The posterior insular cortex has been commonly associated with somatotopic representations of bodily states such as itch, pain and temperature, and touch”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Damasio et al., 2000 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Craig, 2002, 2009
• Supported

  The Introduction describes a proposed somatotopically organized representation of bodily tissues in the dorsal posterior insula and lists temperature, pain, itch, and sensual touch among the associated sensations. This supports the claim's description of what the region is commonly associated with. (LLM, conf=0.94)

  cites Harrison et al., 2010 source

In the paper

“The insular cortex is therefore considered to form an interoceptive image of one’s physiological states and consequently to relay internal needs to subjective awareness of feelings”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Craig, 2002 source
• Supported

  The Introduction describes the posterior insula as representing the physiological condition of bodily tissues and the anterior insula as integrating homeostatic state with other signals to support feeling states. It presents this as a proposed model, consistent with the citing sentence’s ‘considered’ phrasing. (LLM, conf=0.90)

  cites Harrison et al., 2010 source

In the paper

“males and females have been shown to use different strategies in emotion paradigms”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright, 2004 source
• Partly supported

  The passage labeled Abstract reports different empathic neural responses in men and women when they observed an unfair person receiving pain. It does not establish that males and females use different strategies across emotion paradigms; the finding concerns responses in this specific empathy-for-pain task. (LLM, conf=0.85)

  cites Singer et al., 2006 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Schulte-Ruther et al., 2008 source

In the paper

“ACC does not seem to be a critical region in generating awareness, yet it might receive input from AIC and convey the “feeling” information to other brain networks that serve voluntary control functions (Posner and Rothbart, 1998; Craig, 2009; Medford and Critchley, 2010; Valentini, 2010).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Posner and Rothbart, 1998
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Craig, 2009
• Supported

  In “Joint action of ACC and AIC” (page not available), the authors propose that AIC integrates awareness of affective state, which is then re-represented in ACC to guide the selection and preparation of responses. This supports the attributed, tentative account of ACC receiving feeling-related information from AIC and helping direct control functions. (LLM, conf=0.91)

  cites Medford and Critchley, 2010 source

In the paper

“The integration of bottom-up input and top-down recurrent information is considered essential for consciousness to occur (Tononi and Koch, 2008) and is likely to be subserved by long-distance projection neurons (Dehaene et al., 2006; Dehaene and Changeux, 2011).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  In “Reentrant versus Feedforward Activity” (page unavailable), the paper describes a view in which a feedforward sweep becomes conscious when joined by a reentrant sweep. But it presents this as a possibility and questions whether backward signals are critical for consciousness, so it does not establish their integration as essential. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Tononi and Koch, 2008 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“Using Granger causal analysis, Sridharan and colleagues (2008) showed that the right AIC has a causal influence on ACC and plays a critical role in switching between the central executive network and the default mode network.”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Discussion states that the right fronto-insular cortex had a powerful causal influence on the ACC in all three datasets. The paper’s opening summary states that chronometric techniques and Granger causality analysis showed a critical and causal role for the right fronto-insular cortex in switching between the central-executive and default-mode networks. (LLM, conf=0.94)

  cites Sridharan et al., 2008 source

In the paper

“Patients with frontotemporal dementia are more alexithymic than matched controls, and such deficits have been associated with abnormalities in pregenual ACC (Sturm and Levenson, 2011) and AIC (Seeley, 2010).”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Results (Group Comparisons; page unavailable) report significantly higher alexithymia scores in patients with frontotemporal dementia than in controls. The Methods (Participants; page unavailable) report no group differences in age or education, and the Discussion reports an association between alexithymia and right pregenual ACC volume. The AIC portion of the citing sentence is attributed to a different source. (LLM, conf=0.91)

  cites Sturm and Levenson, 2011 source
• Partly supported

  The Introduction links social–emotional changes in behavioral-variant FTD to frontoinsular degeneration, and the Regional and network features section reports anterior-insula atrophy relative to healthy controls. The copy does not report an alexithymia comparison with matched controls or specifically associate alexithymia with anterior-insula abnormalities. The separate pregenual ACC citation is not being judged here; page numbers were not available in the indexed passages. (LLM, conf=0.82)

  cites Seeley, 2010 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“Although AIC and ACC are usually considered as one system with AIC as the input sensory region and ACC as the output control region (Seeley et al., 2007; Craig, 2009; Jones et al., 2010), the finding that ACC is usually activated by but not necessary for empathetic pain perception suggests the existence of multiple control regions other than ACC and that AIC is the only critical input region.”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The ICA and Functional significance sections place the anterior insula/frontoinsula and ACC in the same salience network and discuss interoceptive feedback and ACC error and conflict processing (page numbers unavailable in our copy). They do not characterize AIC specifically as a sensory input region or ACC as the system’s output control region, so the claimed division of roles is not fully supported. (LLM, conf=0.84)

  cites Seeley et al., 2007 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Craig, 2009
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Jones et al., 2010 source

In the paper

“Empathy is closely related to, yet different from, emotional contagion, in that the latter is merely passive, whereas empathy also involves active and top-down components such as perspective taking and social understanding”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Common definitions section (p. 2) distinguishes emotional contagion from empathy and says cognitive empathy can involve perspective taking and top-down processing. Final comments (p. 22) describes emotional contagion as automatic and explains how greater cognitive control can shape empathic responses. But the paper reserves perspective taking for cognitive empathy, not empathy generally, and cautions in Problems with this terminology (p. 3) that empathy and emotional contagion share an underlying process and cannot be fully disentangled. (LLM, conf=0.86)

  cites Preston and de Waal, 2002 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Decety and Jackson, 2004 source

In the paper

“In other words, we borrow from the classical view that ACC serves as a limbic motor region and the AIC as a limbic sensory structure (Craig, 2009; Medford and Critchley, 2010).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Craig, 2009
• Supported

  In “Joint action of ACC and AIC” (page unavailable), the paper describes AIC as integrating sensory information into awareness and ACC as using that information to select and prepare responses. This supports the cited sensory–motor distinction as a broad functional description, although the paper notes that ACC responses are not necessarily motor. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Medford and Critchley, 2010 source

In the paper

“The right AIC, but not the ACC, is also coupled with brain regions involved in task performance across different domains (Eckert et al., 2009).”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Results section on functional connectivity reports that right aI/fO coupling differed between the auditory word-recognition and visual flanker tasks, engaging regions relevant to each task. It found no significant task-related differences in connectivity for the ACC. The comparison concerns task-dependent coupling, not an absence of ACC connectivity altogether; the paper also reports connectivity between the ACC and other frontal regions. (LLM, conf=0.88)

  cites Eckert et al., 2009 source

In the paper

“For instance, he was unable to detect heart rate change at low doses of isoproterenol infusion, his response lag was significantly longer than controls, and his interoceptive awareness was greatly worsened after anesthetic application (Khalsa et al., 2009).”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  In the supplied passage labeled Abstract (page not provided), Roger's awareness ratings were somewhat delayed, and he reported no changes in cardiac sensation after topical anesthetic was applied. The copy does not say he could not detect changes at low isoproterenol doses or establish that his response lag was statistically significantly longer than controls'. (LLM, conf=0.86)

  cites Khalsa et al., 2009 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“In line with the conceptual framework proposed by Singer and colleagues (2009), a recent empirical study shows that subjects use Bayesian rules to update their feelings and that (feeling) variance in prediction errors scale parametrically with AIC activation (Xiang et al., 2013).”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Materials and Methods section (‘Feeling Bayesian observer’; page not provided) says subjects performed a Bayesian update upon observing their emoticon ratings. The Results section (‘Feeling prediction errors’; page not provided) reports that bilateral anterior insula activity correlated with feeling variance prediction errors, supporting the claim about AIC activation. (LLM, conf=0.91)

  cites Xiang et al., 2013 source

In the paper

“The results suggest that, after controlling for cognitive load, AIC, but not ACC, showed increased activation for painful compared with neutral pictures (Fig. 2B, modified from Gu et al., 2010).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Gu et al., 2010

In the paper

“Second, right AIC activation is absent in empathy for positive emotions and present only in empathy of pain and negative emotions, whereas left AIC is activated by all valence categories.”

In the paper

“Third, the left AIC showed a more robust interaction effect (surviving in both ROI and whole-brain analyses) than the right AIC.”

In the paper

“Behavioral data showed increased response time and error rates for painful compared with nonpainful stimuli under the difficult task TL relative to the easy task TB, indicating an interaction between stimulus valence (i.e., pain) and top-down influence (i.e., task demand).”

In the paper

“A posterior-to-anterior gradient in the insular cortex has been proposed, in which physical features of interoception are processed in the posterior insula and the integration of interoception with cognitive and motivational information in the AIC”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Craig, 2009, 2010, 2011

In the paper

“and the right AIC serves a more dominant role than the left AIC”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Craig, 2009, 2010, 2011

In the paper

“4) AIC is necessary for emotional awareness”

• Also stated in: § Abstract · plain

  “We argue that AIC is critical and necessary for emotional awareness.”

In the paper

“patients with focal epileptic seizures that arise from the AIC report heightened emotional awareness and enhanced wellbeing”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Picard, 2013

In the paper

“Taken together, these findings demonstrate the necessity for AIC, but not ACC, in emotional awareness.”

In the paper

“Indeed, ACC also has been considered a significant structure in emotional awareness (Lane et al., 1998; Lieberman, 2007).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Lane et al., 1998 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Lieberman, 2007 source

In the paper

“Diminished ability to integrate information rapidly among spatially distinct regions may underlie functional deficits in these conditions and, ultimately, in the inability to make quick and intuitive judgments regarding uncertain and rapidly changing social contexts”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Allman et al., 2005 source

In the paper

“Although AIC and ACC are usually considered as one system with AIC as the input sensory region and ACC as the output control region (Seeley et al., 2007; Craig, 2009; Jones et al., 2010), the finding that ACC is usually activated by but not necessary for empathetic pain perception suggests the existence of multiple control regions other than ACC and that AIC is the only critical input region.”

In the paper

“Fourth, such synergy did not occur in ACC, which further suggests that AIC and ACC are functionally dissociable and singles out the significance of AIC in subjective awareness.”

In the paper

“This suggests that emotional awareness is important to mental health and that impaired emotional awareness interferes with normal social function in both clinical and nonclinical populations.”

In the paper

“However, AIC patients lacked such interference between stimulus valence and laterality judgment, indicating that the integration of stimulus-driven and top-down information was impaired in patients with AIC lesions and that AIC is necessary for bottom-up and top-down integration.”

In the paper

“In the framework of predictive coding and hierarchical inference, top-down, higher-level cortical activities try to predict or “explain away” the bottom-up sensory information conveyed by lower-level brain regions (Friston, 2002, 2010).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Friston, 2002 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Friston, 2010 source

In the paper

“This finding is consistent with the notion that right AIC encodes “energy-consuming” negative feelings”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Craig, 2011

In the paper

“This finding points out the importance of AIC, in dissociation from ACC, in emotional awareness.”

In the paper

“Such signal might be subsequently conveyed to control regions such as ACC and prefrontal cortex for appropriate behavioral output.”

In the paper

“Sudden changes in reward contingencies and inquisitive policies also activate AIC (Li et al., 2006).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Li et al., 2006

In the paper

“Although we agree with the authors that emotional awareness is less likely to be subserved by one neural substrate such as the insula and is more likely to be processed by distributed networks including low-level brainstem and thalamic nuclei, we next discuss possible sources of discrepancies in the findings among studies.”

In the paper

“In short, AIC is able to cause changes in the physiological states of the body, in addition to perceiving changes from the body.”

In the paper

“We consider this signal to represent the current state of the organism that, on the one hand, is consistent with top-down predictions from higher-level representations of goals, actions, and attention (e.g., from ACC) and, on the other hand, best predicts future awareness states.”

In the paper

“According to a predictive coding account of the brain (Dayan et al., 1995; Friston, 2002, 2010), bottom-up stimulus-driven projections convey prediction errors, and top-down pathways convey active predictions.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Dayan et al., 1995 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Friston, 2002 source
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Friston, 2010 source

In the paper

“The AIC is perfectly placed anatomically to do this; it is equipped with the anatomical and functional foundation to perform the very important task of inducing transitions in physiological states.”

In the paper

“These findings are consistent with our findings on unilateral AIC lesions in that interoceptive and emotional awareness is impaired but not completely abolished in these patients.”

In the paper

“AIC, in this sense, could be where the “sentient self” resides.”

In the paper

“This is a necessary consequence of hierarchical Bayesian inference and the recurrent exchange of neuronal signals implicit in predictive coding.”

In the paper

“Another study showed that AIC is activated by not only prediction of risk but also the prediction error of risk (Preuschoff et al., 2008), which relates to unexpected uncertainty and state transition (Yu and Dayan, 2005).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Preuschoff et al., 2008 source

In the paper

“This model resolves the conceptual dialectic between the James-Lange theory and the Cannon-Bard formulations, in the sense that they are both right: bodily sensations both cause and are caused by central representations.”

In the paper

“In other words, the AIC both responds to and controls the internal milieu or literally “gut feelings.””