A selective role for right insula—basal ganglia circuits in appetitive stimulus processing

Abstract

Hemispheric lateralization of hedonic evaluation ('liking') and incentive motivation ('wanting') in neural networks connecting the basal ganglia and insula (BG-I) in humans was examined. Participants with brain damage restricted to the BG-I of the right (n = 5) or left (n = 5) hemisphere, and 26 healthy participants matched on age, sex and intelligence quotient were tested on positively and negatively valenced pictures drawn from varied stimulus categories (Vijayaraghavan et al., 2008). Liking was assessed with explicit ratings of pleasantness using a nine-point Likert scale. Wanting was quantified as the amount of work (via repeated keypresses) that participants expended to increase (approach) or decrease (withdraw) viewing time. Right-lesion patients showed abnormally low viewing times and liking ratings for positive images. For a subset of positive images depicting sexual content, right-lesion patients exhibited active withdrawal, while the other two groups approached such stimuli. These results suggest that the right basal ganglia-insula complex plays a greater role than the left in supporting hedonic evaluation and motivational approach to positively valenced stimuli. The finding that active avoidance of stimuli that were not 'liked' was spared in both right- and left-sided lesion subjects suggests that unilateral damage to insula/basal ganglia circuits may not be sufficient to affect general incentive motivation independent of preference.

Do brain lesions in stroke affect basic emotions and attachment?

“…Our study provides the first empirical evidence that basic emotions like SEEKING, SADNESS, FEAR, and ANGER are affected by stroke in general and specific lesion locations in particular. These results can find some correspondences with other studies relative to the motivational system of emotions in brain-damaged patients (e.g., Feinstein et al, 2013;Vijayaraghavan et al, 2013) This is well in line with both neuroscientific and clinical evidence. Neuroscientifically, basic emotions have been associated with mainly subcortical and medial regions in the brain; this is congruent with the various emotional changes following specific lesion locations observed in our study.…”

The orbitofrontal cortex modulates parenting stress in the maternal brain

“…Furthermore, a meta-representation of primary interoceptive activity is engendered in the right anterior insula, which seems to provide the basis for the subjective image of the material self as a feeling entity (i.e., emotional awareness) 36 . A previous study has reported that the right insular cortex plays a greater role than the left in supporting reward evaluation and motivational approaches to positive stimuli 37 . An additional study has noted that the perceived warmth of a mother’s infant was correlated with activation in her right AIC when viewing her infant 33 .…”

Interoception and drug addiction

“…given similar expected reward, a high density of low reward possibilities was associated with greater insular activation. In addition, enhancement of the hedonic (Vijayaraghavan et al, 2012) and incentive (Chaudhry et al, 2009) values of an option by both cognitive and affective processes involves the insular cortex. Some investigators have found an exaggerated insula response to monetary reward reception in abstinent cocaine dependent individuals (Jia et al, 2011) and marijuana users (Cousijn et al, 2012) whereas others have found hypoactivity in the left insula cortex in response to loss and loss avoidance outcome notifications in cannabis users (Nestor et al, 2010).…”