Hemispheric Lateralization of Resting-State Functional Connectivity of the Anterior Insula: Association with Age, Gender, and a Novelty-Seeking Trait

Abstract

Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) is widely used to examine cerebral functional organization. The imaging literature has described lateralization of insula activations during cognitive and affective processing. Evidence appears to support a role of the right-hemispheric insula in attentional orientation to salient stimulus, interoception, and physiological arousal, and a role of the left-hemispheric insula in cognitive and affective control, as well as perspective taking. In this study, in a large data set of healthy adults, we examined lateralization of the rsFC of the anterior insula (AI) by computing a laterality index (LI) of connectivity with 54 regions from the Automated Anatomic Labeling atlas. At a corrected threshold (p < 0.001), the AI is left lateralized in connectivity with the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, superior frontal gyrus, inferior frontal cortex, and posterior orbital gyrus and right lateralized in connectivity with the postcentral gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and superior parietal lobule. In gender differences, women, but not men, showed right-lateralized connectivity to the thalamus. Furthermore, in a subgroup of participants assessed by the tridimensional personality questionnaire, novelty seeking is correlated with the extent of left lateralization of AI connectivity to the pallidum and putamen in men and with the extent of right lateralization of AI connectivity to the parahippocampal gyrus in women. These findings support hemispheric functional differentiation of the AI.

Damage to the Right Insula Disrupts the Perception of Affective Touch

“…Thus, even when the left insula and somatosensory cortex are intact and hence presumably contralateral stimuli are processed in the left cortex (as also revealed by the intact detection of ipsilesional tactile stimuli in our patients), a right anterior insula lesion is enough to cause deficits in the perception of affective touch on the right forearm. Our findings address existing debates about hemispheric laterality and interoceptive awareness (Kann et al, 2016;Khalsa et al, 2009;Salomon et al, 2016), although the VLSM method has known, intrinsic limitations and we cannot exclude the possibility of the role of the left insula in affective touch perception, nor the impact of lesions of the right hemisphere in disconnecting tracts towards the left hemisphere. However, taken together, our findings support previous findings about the functional organization and role of the human insula (Craig, 2010;Cauda et al,…”

“…Instead, we expected that lesions involving mainly the right posterior insula (Morrison, 2016) would lead to a lack of pleasantness sensitivity, particularly on the contralesional forearm. Moreover, as some authors have proposed that the right hemisphere, and particularly the right anterior insula, has a crucial role in interoceptive awareness for the entire body (Craig, 2009;Critchley et al, 2004;Kann et al, 2016;Khalsa et al, 2009;Salomon et al, 2016), we expected also to find some causal role of ipsilateral areas (right hemisphere regions after touch on the right forearm) and particularly the right anterior insula in the perception of affective touch on the ipsilesional forearm.…”

Depression in chronic ketamine users: Sex differences and neural bases

“…We followed standard procedures in image preprocessing, as in our recent work (Kann et al, 2016; Kline et al, 2016; Zhang et al, 2016a; Zhang et al, 2016b). Images of each individual subject were first realigned (motion corrected) and corrected for slice timing.…”

Peripheral and Central Mechanisms in Irritable Bowel Syndrome : in search of links

“…In general, the right aINS is linked to energy spending, survival processes and emotions, arousal and sympathetic activity, whereas, on the contrary, the left aINS, is associated with energy saving activities, nourishment, affiliative emotions and parasympathetic activity [46][47][48]. However, studies report sex differences in lateralization of emotional processing involving aINS, with the prevailance of left aINS activation by emotional stimuli in men, while similar activation of both aINS in women [107].…”