Huge mapping study reveals how your brain tracks what your body is feeling

A Nature study by Josef Parvizi and colleagues at Stanford University applied electrical stimulation at multiple sites in the insular cortex of 87 patients who had brain electrodes implanted for medical reasons. They found the posterior insula encodes limb pain, tingling and heat, the middle part mediates visceral sensations such as nausea and chest tightness, and the anterior part communicates with cognitive and emotional brain regions and contributes to interpreting bodily sensations. Lucina Uddin, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, calls it one of the most comprehensive studies of the human insula to date, revising the traditional view that the insula only passively reads body signals.