Glossary
Insula
What is the insula?
The insula is a region of the cerebral cortex folded within the lateral sulcus, a deep groove on the side of the brain. It is involved in interoception—the sensing of the body’s internal state—as well as aspects of feeling and cognition.
How it works
The insula contains multiple subdivisions whose functions and connections differ. The anterior insula participates in the salience network, while mid-posterior areas are more closely associated with bodily sensory and motor processing. Within the anterior insula, ventral areas have stronger associations with socio-emotional processing and dorsal areas with cognitive processing. A two-part anterior/posterior description is a useful simplification, not a complete map.
Applied example
Noticing your heartbeat is a concrete example of interoception. Researchers study how people attend to this bodily signal and how that attention relates to insular activity and connections. This does not mean the insula works alone or that noticing a fast heartbeat identifies a specific emotion.
If insular activity changes during a pain or social task, this helps locate a response associated with the task. Overlapping regional activity does not, by itself, prove that physical pain and social rejection have the same neural representation.
Why it matters
Studying the insula helps investigate interactions among bodily signals, feelings and cognition. Its broad involvement means activity there is not a unique indicator of a particular emotion.
Uddin and colleagues (2017) emphasize the insula’s structural and functional diversity.