Feelings of warmth correlate with neural activity in right anterior insular cortex

Abstract

The neural coding of perception can differ from that for the physical attributes of a stimulus. Recent studies suggest that activity in right anterior insular cortex may underlie thermal perception, particularly that of cold. We now examine whether this region is also important for the perception of warmth. We applied cutaneous warm stimuli on the left leg (warmth) in normal subjects ( n = 7) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). After each stimulus, subjects rated their subjective intensity of the stimulus using a visual analogue scale (VAS), and correlations were determined between the fMRI signal and the VAS ratings. We found that intensity ratings of warmth correlated with the fMRI signal in the right (contralateral to stimulation) anterior insular cortex. These results, in conjunction with previous reports, suggest that the right anterior insular cortex is important for different types of thermal perception.