BACKGROUND Insula infarction is an early computed tomographic sign of middle cerebral artery (MCA) territory stroke and may affect cardiovascular autonomic function. OBJECTIVE To determine insula involvement in MCA territory infarction and its relationship with infarcts in the remainder of the MCA territory, stroke severity, and clinically relevant cardiovascular conditions. DESIGN Case ser...

BACKGROUND The insular cortex comprises multiple functionally differentiated sub-regions, each of which has different patterns of connectivity with other brain regions. Such diverse connectivity patterns are thought to underlie a wide range of insular functions, including cognitive, affective, and sensorimotor processing, many of which are abnormal in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although pa...

Theories of schizophrenia propose that abnormal functioning of the neural reward system is linked to negative and psychotic symptoms, by disruption of reward processing and promotion of context-independent false associations. Recently, it has been argued that an insula-anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) salience network system enables switching of brain states from the default mode to a task-relat...

The insula has been identified as a key region involved in interoceptive awareness. Whilst imaging studies have investigated the neural activation patterns in this region involved in intero- and exteroceptive awareness, the underlying biochemical mechanisms still remain unclear. In order to investigate these, a well-established fMRI task targeting interoceptive awareness (heartbeat counting) an...

s | 91 Methods: Forty-five right-handed patients with PD who met the diagnostic criteria in Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-V and twenty-two healthy control were examined by means of MRI at 3 Tesla. We used the FreeSurfer software package to create a three-dimensional model of the cortical surface for estimating the cortical thickness. In order to test the effect of the gene polymorphism ...

This pilot study aimed to explore whether criminal psychopaths can learn volitional regulation of the left anterior insula with real-time fMRI neurofeedback. Our previous studies with healthy volunteers showed that learned control of the blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) signal was specific to the target region, and not a result of general arousal and global unspecific brain activation, ...

Patients with Parkinson's disease experience a range of non-motor symptoms, including cognitive impairment, behavioural changes, somatosensory and autonomic disturbances. The insula, which was once thought to be primarily a limbic cortical structure, is now known to be highly involved in integrating somatosensory, autonomic and cognitive-affective information to guide behaviour. Thus, it acts a...

Background: The insula is instrumental in integrating the emotional, cognitive, and sensory-motor systems. This manuscript lays a foundational framework for understanding the insula’s mechanistic role in moderating brain networks in illness and wellness. Methods: Reviewed here is the select literature on the brain anatomy and function relevant to the insula’s role in psychiatrically ill and nor...

Previous studies have shown that healthy participants learn to control local brain activity with operant training by using real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI). Very little data exist, however, on the dynamics of interaction between critical brain regions during rt-fMRI-based training. Here, we examined self-regulation of stimulus-elicited insula activation and performed a ...

s | 91 Methods: Forty-five right-handed patients with PD who met the diagnostic criteria in Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-V and twenty-two healthy control were examined by means of MRI at 3 Tesla. We used the FreeSurfer software package to create a three-dimensional model of the cortical surface for estimating the cortical thickness. In order to test the effect of the gene polymorphism ...