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The insula, or insular cortex, is a part of the cerebral cortex located at the base of the Sylvian fissure, and is involved in the processing of emotions, memory, taste, and regulation of the autonomic nervous system.
The existence of a common substrate for emotional valence and anxiety remained elusive. Here we show that excitatory neurons of the anterior insular cortex (aIC), including neurons projecting to the basolateral amygdala (aIC-BLA) encode both states.
Animals may approach normally aversive stimuli such as an air puff when in a non-enriched environment. Here the authors show that dopamine release in the ventral lateral striatum was reduced by aversive stimulation, but was increased when it was actively sought.
Fear is actively maintained in balance in mice by the insular cortex, which gates extinction learning according to an animal’s fear level using interoceptive signals related to fear expression that are sent to the brain via the vagus nerve.
In mice, peripheral immune responses can be encoded by neurons in the insular cortex, and reactivation of these neurons can lead to retrieval of peripheral inflammation.
