Damage to the right insula disrupts the perception of affective touch
- Sorbonne Universite, France
- University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
- University College London, United Kingdom
- University of Verona, Italy
- University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
Abstract
Specific, peripheral C-tactile afferents contribute to the perception of tactile pleasure, but the brain areas involved in their processing remain debated. We report the first human lesion study on the perception of C-tactile touch in right hemisphere stroke patients (N = 59), revealing that right posterior and anterior insula lesions reduce tactile, contralateral and ipsilateral pleasantness sensitivity, respectively. These findings corroborate previous imaging studies regarding the role of the posterior insula in the perception of affective touch. However, our findings about the crucial role of the anterior insula for ipsilateral affective touch perception open new avenues of enquiry regarding the cortical organization of this tactile system.
Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/fyrwc/?view_only=75773c749be84432994beca994481988).
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Affective Touch Lesion StudyOpen Science Framework, fyrwc.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
European Research Council (ERC-2012-STG GA313755)
- Aikaterini Fotopoulou
MIUR Italy (PRIN 20159CZFJK)
- Valentina Moro
University of Verona (Bando di Ateneo per la Ricerca di Base 2015 project MOTOS)
- Valentina Moro
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: All participants gave written, informed consent to take part in the study and to publish. The local National Health System Ethics Committees approved the study (REC:05/Q0706/218), which was carried out in accordance to the Declaration of Helsinki.
Copyright
© 2020, Kirsch et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Damage to the right insula disrupts the perception of affective touch
eLife 9:e47895.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.47895
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