Abstract
The present study aimed at investigating the relationship between Emotional Susceptibility (ES), an aspect of the personality trait Neuroticism, and individual differences in the neural responses in anterior insula to primary sensory stimuli colored by affective valence, i.e., distasting or pleasantly tasting oral stimuli. In addition, it was studied whether intrinsic functional connectivity patterns of brain regions characterized by such differential responses could be related to ES. To this purpose 25 female participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning, while being involved in a flavor experiment. During the experiment, flavor stimuli were administered consisting of small amounts of liquid with a different affective valence: neutral, pleasant, unpleasant. The results showed that individual differences in ES trait predicted distinct neural activity patterns to the different stimulus conditions in a region of left anterior insula that a previous meta-analysis revealed to be linked with olfacto-gustatory processing. Specifically, low ES was associated with enhanced neural responses to both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli, compared to neutral stimuli. By contrast, high ES participants showed equally strong neural responses to all types of stimuli without differentiating between the neutral and affective stimuli. Finally, during a task-free state, high ES trait appeared also to be related to decreased intrinsic functional connectivity between left anterior insula and left cerebellum. Our findings show that individual differences in ES are associated with differential anterior insula responses to primary sensory (flavor) stimuli as well as to intrinsic functional cortico-cerebellar connectivity, the latter suggesting a basis in the brain intrinsic functional architecture of the regulation of emotional experiences.
Highlights
Since the beginning of this century, neuroscience increasingly devoted attention to the relationship between personality traits and the neural processing of affect (Canli and Amin, 2002; Hamann and Canli, 2004; Servaas et al, 2013)
The present study aimed at investigating the modulation of neural activity during flavor experiences and functional connectivity of insula by individual differences in Emotional Susceptibility (ES) trait
The results showed differential neural activity patterns in left anterior insula when comparing low and high ES participants
Summary
Since the beginning of this century, neuroscience increasingly devoted attention to the relationship between personality traits and the neural processing of affect (Canli and Amin, 2002; Hamann and Canli, 2004; Servaas et al, 2013). The relationship between personality traits and the processing of oral stimuli with emotional valence could inform about how individual differences can originate in primary bodily experiences. Specific parts of anterior insula have been consistently associated with taste and flavor processing as well as related emotions (e.g., primary taste cortex), no relationship was examined between the affective coding of taste or flavor in the insular cortex and personality traits such as ES or neuroticism, yet. The present study aimed to investigate whether ES trait is associated with differences in the anterior insula responses to flavor perception For this purpose, functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed while negative (unpleasant), positive (pleasant), and neutral oral stimuli were administered in the mouth of healthy adult participants characterized by low of high ES trait. A different pattern of insula intrinsic functional connectivity is expected between high and low ES participants, possibly contributing to individual differences in the regulation of affective responses, typically reduced in individuals with high ES trait (Caprara et al, 1983, 1987)
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