UNLABELLED The processing of interoceptive signals in the insular cortex is thought to underlie self-awareness. However, the influence of interoception on visual awareness and the role of the insular cortex in this process remain unclear. Here, we show in a series of experiments that the relative timing of visual stimuli with respect to the heartbeat modulates visual awareness. We used two mask...

Schizophrenia is a syndrome that is typically accompanied by delusions and hallucinations that might be associated with insular pathology. Music intervention, as a complementary therapy, is commonly used to improve psychiatric symptoms in the maintenance stage of schizophrenia. In this study, we employed a longitudinal design to assess the effects of listening to Mozart music on the insular fun...

The posterior insular cortex-a complex structure interconnecting various brain regions for different functions-is a rare location for ischemic stroke. We report a patient with isolated left posterior insular infarction who presented with multiple cognitive impairment, including impairment in semantic and phonemic verbal fluency.

Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy have inexplicable fear attack as the aura. However, the underlying neural mechanisms of seizure‐modulated fear are not clarified. Recent studies identified stathmin as one of the key controlling molecules in learning and innate fear. Stathmin binds to tubulin, inhibits microtubule assembly and promotes microtubule catastrophes. Therefore, stathmin is predict...

Transient nociceptive stimuli elicit robust phase-locked local field potentials (LFPs) in the human insula. However, these responses are not preferential for nociception, as they are also elicited by transient non-nociceptive vibrotactile, auditory, and visual stimuli. Here, we investigated whether another feature of insular activity, namely gamma-band oscillations (GBOs), is preferentially obs...

Functional imaging in humans and anatomical data in monkeys have implicated the insula as a multimodal sensory integrative brain region. The topography of insular connections is organized by its cytoarchitectonic regions. Previous attempts to measure the insula have utilized either indirect or automated methods. This study was designed to develop a reliable method for obtaining volumetric magne...

Dyspnea is common in many cardiorespiratory diseases. Already the anticipation of this aversive symptom elicits fear in many patients resulting in unfavorable health behaviors such as activity avoidance and sedentary lifestyle. This study investigated brain mechanisms underlying these anticipatory processes. We induced dyspnea using resistive-load breathing in healthy subjects during functional...