fMRI responses to pictures of mutilation and contamination.
Findings from several functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies implicate the existence of a distinct neural disgust substrate, whereas others support the idea of distributed and integrative brain systems involved in emotional processing. In the present fMRI experiment 12 healthy females viewed pictures from four emotion categories. Two categories were disgust-relevant and depicted contamination or mutilation. The other scenes showed attacks (fear) or were affectively neutral. The two types of disgust elicitors received comparable ratings for disgust, fear and arousal. Both were associated with activation of the occipitotemporal cortex, the amygdala, and the orbitofrontal cortex; insula activity was nonsignificant in the two disgust conditions. Mutilation scenes induced greater inferior parietal activity than contamination scenes, which might mirror their greater capacity to capture attention. Our results are in disagreement with the idea of selective disgust processing at the insula. They point to a network of brain regions involved in the decoding of stimulus salience and the regulation of attention.
Schienle
Anne
A
Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, University of Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Str. 10, 35394 Giessen, Germany. Anne.Schienle@psychol.uni-giessen.de
Schäfer
Axel
A
Hermann
Andrea
A
Walter
Bertram
B
Stark
Rudolf
R
Vaitl
Dieter
D
D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D000077463:Carbamide Peroxide; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000502:physiology; D004338:Drug Combinations; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010545:Peroxides / Q000097:blood; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D014508:Urea / Q000031:analogs & derivatives / Q000097:blood
D004338:Drug Combinations; D010545:Peroxides; D000077463:Carbamide Peroxide; D014508:Urea