Refine
Document Type
- Article (3)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
Has Fulltext
- yes (4)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (4)
Keywords
- insula (4) (remove)
Institute
Publisher
- Frontiers Media S.A. (1)
- Oxford University Press (1)
- Wiley (1)
Background and purpose
The insula has important functions in monitoring and integrating physiological responses to a personal experience of multimodal input. The experience of chills in response to auditory stimuli is an important example for a relevant arousing experience coupled with bodily response. A group study about altered chill experiences in patients with insula lesions is lacking.
Methods
Twenty-eight stroke patients with predominantly insula lesions in the chronic stage and 14 age-matched controls were investigated using chill stimuli of both valences (music, harsh sounds). Group differences were analyzed in subjective chill reports, associated bodily responses (skin conductance response), lesion mapping, diffusion-weighted imaging and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Other neuropsychological deficits were excluded by comprehensive testing. Diffusion-weighted imaging was quantified for four insula tracts using fractional anisotropy.
Results
The frequency of chill experiences was comparable between participant groups. However, bodily responses were decreased for the stroke group. Whereas there was no association of lesion location, a positive association was found for the skin conductance response during aversive sounds and the tract connecting anterior inferior insula and left temporal pole in the stroke group. Similarly, functional magnetic resonance imaging activation in areas hypothesized to compensate for damage was increased with bodily response.
Conclusions
A decoupling of felt arousal and bodily response after insula lesion was observed. Impaired bodily response was related to an impaired interaction of the left anterior insula and the temporal pole.
Structural integrity of the insula and emotional facial recognition performance following stroke
(2023)
The role of the human insula in facial emotion recognition is controversially discussed, especially in relation to lesion-location-dependent impairment following stroke. In addition, structural connectivity quantification of important white-matter tracts that link the insula to impairments in facial emotion recognition has not been investigated. In a case–control study, we investigated a group of 29 stroke patients in the chronic stage and 14 healthy age- and gender-matched controls. Lesion location of stroke patients was analysed with voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. In addition, structural white-matter integrity for tracts between insula regions and their primarily known interconnected brain structures was quantified by tractography-based fractional anisotropy. Our behavioural analyses showed that stroke patients were impaired in the recognition of fearful, angry and happy but not disgusted expressions. Voxel-based lesion mapping revealed that especially lesions centred around the left anterior insula were associated with impaired recognition of emotional facial expressions. The structural integrity of insular white-matter connectivity was decreased for the left hemisphere and impaired recognition accuracy for angry and fearful expressions was associated with specific left-sided insular tracts. Taken together, these findings suggest that a multimodal investigation of structural alterations has the potential to deepen our understanding of emotion recognition impairments after stroke.
Results on gray matter alterations in complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) showed heterogeneous findings. Since CRPS is a rare disease, most studies included only small and heterogeneous samples resulting in a low reliability of findings between studies. We investigated 24 CRPS patients with right upper limb affection in the chronic stage of disease using structural MRI and clinical testing. We focused on gray matter volume (GMV) alterations of the brain in comparison to 33 age matched healthy controls, their association to clinical characteristics (duration of pain syndrome and pain intensity ratings) and sensorimotor performance (finger dexterity and spatiotactile resolution). When applying an explorative whole brain analysis CRPS patients showed lower GMV in the bilateral medial thalamus. No other areas showed a relevant GMV difference for the group comparisons. When applying a region of interest driven approach using anatomical masks of the thalamus, ACC/mPFC, putamen, and insula we found relevant associations of clinical and behavioral data in ACC and insula. Whereas, the GMV in ACC showed negative associations with pain intensity and CRPS duration, the GMV of the left posterior insula was negatively associated with sensorimotor performance of the affected hand side. Overall, our results are in accordance to results of others describing a thalamic reduction of GMV in patients with neuropathic pain and are also in accordance with associations of pain intensity and duration with reduced ACC in general in patients with chronic pain syndromes. Sensorimotor performance seems to be related to posterior insula GMV reduction, which has not been described yet for other patient groups.
Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, mögliche zerebrale Effekte einer Okklusionsschienentherapie bei der Behandlung von CMD-Patienten näher zu belichten. Wir untersuchten hierzu CMD-Patienten mit Hilfe der fMRT-Bildgebung während Kieferöffnungs- und Schließbewegungen. Aus unserer orientierenden Einzelfallstudie gab es erste Hinweise darauf, dass durch die Okklusionsschiene eine Art motorischer Lernprozess ausgelöst wird, durch den die Funktion des Kausystems optimiert wird und so wieder physiologische Bewegungen ermöglicht werden. Außerdem war eine Aktivitätsabnahme in der Insula im Therapieverlauf zu verzeichnen, die vermutlich schmerzassoziiert war. In der weiterführenden Gruppenstudie, die einen Therapiezeitraum von etwa zwei Wochen umfasste, wurden die fMRT-Messungen weiter verfeinert und um kinematographische Untersuchungen der kondylären Bewegungsbahnen sowie elektromyographische Messungen des M. masseter ergänzt. In einem Schmerztagebuch evaluierten die Patienten täglich ihre Schmerzstärke. Diese nahm im Verlauf signifikant ab und korrelierte u.a. mit einer veränderten Aktivität der rechten anterioren und linken posterioren Insula. Gerade die Assoziation mit der rechten anterioren Insula weist auf eine starke affektive Komponente des Schmerzes hin, wie sie z.B. bei chronischen Schmerzpatienten gefunden wird. Auch zeigte sich eine allgemein erhöhte Aktivität der rechten anterioren Insula zu Beginn der Therapie, welche möglicherweise mit einer Art Schmerzantizipation in Zusammenhang stand. Erneut fanden wir Hinweise auf eine durch die Aufbissschienentherapie induzierte verbesserte Koordination des Kausystems. Hierbei ging eine Symmetriezunahme der kondylären Bewegungsbahnen einher mit einer Abnahme im rechten präcentralen Gyrus und der linken cerebellären Hemisphäre. Beide Areale sind bekanntermaßen an frühen motorischen Lernvorgängen beteiligt. Unsere EMG-Daten deuten ebenfalls auf eine Verbesserung der Beißfunktion durch die Schienentherapie hin, da die Ruhe-EMG-Aktivität im Verlauf relaxierte bei gleichzeitiger Zunahme der EMG-Aktivität bei maximalem Aufbiss in die Interkuspidation. So lässt sich aus dieser Arbeit schlussfolgern, dass die Okklusionsschienentherapie nicht nur eine erfolgreiche Schmerzreduktion ermöglicht, sondern auch die motorische Funktion des Kausystems verbessert. Zukünftige Studien sollten diese Aspekte weiter erforschen.