Anterior insula

What is the anterior insula?

The anterior insula, also called the anterior insular cortex, is a brain region involved in sensing the body’s internal state and in emotional awareness. The term interoception refers to that sensing of internal conditions, such as the heartbeat and other bodily signals.

How it works

Craig’s 2009 review proposed that representations of the body’s internal state help explain the region’s role in subjective feelings. This is an account of how bodily information could contribute to awareness.

The anterior insula participates in many tasks and works with other regions. Activity there alone cannot tell us that someone is feeling empathy, following an intuition, or experiencing one particular emotion.

Why it matters

The research helps connect bodily regulation with attention and experience. “Gut feeling” is a useful everyday phrase for an experience, but it is not an anatomical explanation. To understand where a feeling comes from, researchers have to examine bodily signals and brain activity rather than infer the answer from the phrase.