Decoding the role of the insula in human cognition: functional parcellation and large-scale reverse inference.

By Luke J. Chang, Tal Yarkoni, Mel W. Khaw, Alan G. Sanfey. Cerebral Cortex, 2013

834 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent work has indicated that the insula may be involved in goal-directed cognition, switching between networks, and the conscious awareness of affect and somatosensation. However, these findings have been limited by the insula's remarkably high base rate of activation and considerable functional heterogeneity. The present study used a relatively unbiased data-driven approach combining resting-state connectivity-based parcellation of the insula with large-scale meta-analysis to understand how the insula is anatomically organized based on functional connectivity patterns as well as the consistency and specificity of the associated cognitive functions. Our findings support a tripartite subdivision of the insula and reveal that the patterns of functional connectivity in the resting-state analysis appear to be relatively conserved across tasks in the meta-analytic coactivation analysis. The function of the networks was meta-analytically "decoded" using the Neurosynth framework and revealed that while the dorsoanterior insula is more consistently involved in human cognition than ventroanterior and posterior networks, each parcellated network is specifically associated with a distinct function. Collectively, this work suggests that the insula is instrumental in integrating disparate functional systems involved in processing affect, sensory-motor processing, and general cognition and is well suited to provide an interface between feelings, cognition, and action.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f953a44f190462f567a4f09be1760bc27a8ba32b

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

Anterior Insular Cortex and Emotional Awareness (2013, positive): “…that the insular cortex works closely with a network of regions, including the ACC (Critchley, 2004; Critchley et al., 2004; Medford and Critchley, 2010; Fan et al., 2011; Denny et al., 2012; Lindquist et al., 2012), somatosensory cortex (Gu et al., 2013), and amygdala (Etkin and Wager, 2007).”
Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: a meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies. (2014, background): “…linked to reward processing (Schultz et al. 1992), the insula, which supports integration of affective and viscerosensory information (Craig 2009; Chang et al. 2012; Zaki et al. 2012), and brainstem regions such as the periaqueductal gray, which is involved in the coordination of behavioral and…”
The Human Brainnetome Atlas: A New Brain Atlas Based on Connectional Architecture (2016, positive): “(Kurth, Eickhoff, et al. 2010; Kurth, Zilles, et al. 2010; Kelly et al. 2012; Chang et al. 2013; Morel et al. 2013), identifying a dorsal and ventral aspect of the anterior insula, a central Figure 5.”
Individual Differences in Marketing Placebo Effects: Evidence from Brain Imaging and Behavioral Experiments (2015, background): “Other large-scale meta-analyses have also found this area to be involved in introspection and somatosensory awareness (Chang et al. 2013; Simmons et al. 2012).”
Contributions of episodic retrieval and mentalizing to autobiographical thought: evidence from functional neuroimaging, resting-state connectivity, and fMRI meta-analyses (2014, background): “To highlight the common and unique functional “fingerprints” linked to each mental state, we created polar plots displaying the relative loading of each activation map on each of these terms (see also Yeo et al., 2011; Chang et al., 2013).”
Network attributes for segregation and integration in the human brain. (2013, methodology): “Particularly promising are multimodal approaches, for example combining resting-state functional connectivity with data on task-related activations [21 ] (Figure 2a) or with meta-analytic coactivation analysis [22], or combining boundary detection in structural and functional brain networks [23].”
From brain maps to cognitive ontologies: informatics and the search for mental structure (2015, background): “Figure adapted with permission from Chang et al. (2013). carves the joints of mental function.”
Decision and response monitoring during working memory are sequentially represented in the human insula (2022, unknown): “Instead, our findings support a key role in response monitoring, potentially achieved through its connection with the cingulate gyrus(7,77) and the sensory-motor system.(24,33,36,78) The posterior insula may monitor the sensorimotor information triggered by themotor response and integrate it with th”