Social cognition and the insula: in search for a common role of the insula in experiencing disgust and recognizing disgust in others. A combined behavioral, functional and reversible perturbation study in the non-human primate.

A popular view in social neurosciences posits that we understand other individual`s actions, sensations and emotions at least in part by internally simulating these observed events in our own motor, somatosensory and emotional brain areas. In other words, this view suggests that some of the very same neurons that allow us to grasp an object, experience pain or to feel happy or disgusted, also allow us to understand similar behavior or experiences in others. The discovery of mirror neurons in the monkey brain provided evidence for a neuronal substrate underlying these shared representations. While a substantial body of neurophysiological and neuroimaging investigations in both human and non-human primates over the past decades indeed supports the existence and function of common coding of own and others’ actions, for emotions we particularly lack causal evidence showing that vicariously activating brain regions involved in our own emotions while witnessing those of others contributes to our perception of and reaction to the emotions of others. By combining focal reversible perturbation experiments with cognitive and behavioral fMRI compatible tasks in monkeys, we will investigate if the monkeys’ anterior insula, a key region involved in the experience of the emotion of disgust, also plays a critical role in the recognition of this emotion in others.