Laboratory for Social and Neural Systems Research, University of Zurich, Blümlisalpstrasse 10, 8006, Zurich, Switzerland.
Brain Struct Funct. 2010 Jun;214(5-6):579-91. doi: 10.1007/s00429-010-0251-3. Epub 2010 Apr 29.
Functional neuroimaging investigations in the fields of social neuroscience and neuroeconomics indicate that the anterior insular cortex (AI) is consistently involved in empathy, compassion, and interpersonal phenomena such as fairness and cooperation. These findings suggest that AI plays an important role in social emotions, hereby defined as affective states that arise when we interact with other people and that depend on the social context. After we link the role of AI in social emotions to interoceptive awareness and the representation of current global emotional states, we will present a model suggesting that AI is not only involved in representing current states, but also in predicting emotional states relevant to the self and others. This model also proposes that AI enables us to learn about emotional states as well as about the uncertainty attached to events, and implies that AI plays a dominant role in decision making in complex and uncertain environments. Our review further highlights that dorsal and ventro-central, as well as anterior and posterior subdivisions of AI potentially subserve different functions and guide different aspects of behavioral regulation. We conclude with a section summarizing different routes to understanding other people's actions, feelings and thoughts, emphasizing the notion that the predominant role of AI involves understanding others' feeling and bodily states rather than their action intentions or abstract beliefs.
功能神经影像学研究表明，前脑岛皮层（anterior insular cortex，AI）在同理心、同情心以及公平和合作等人际现象中发挥着重要作用。这些发现表明，AI 在社会情绪中起着重要作用，我们将社会情绪定义为在与他人互动时产生的、依赖于社会情境的情感状态。在我们将 AI 在社会情绪中的作用与内感受意识和当前整体情绪状态的表示联系起来之后，我们提出了一个模型，表明 AI 不仅参与了当前状态的表示，还参与了对自我和他人相关情绪状态的预测。该模型还提出，AI 使我们能够了解情绪状态以及与事件相关的不确定性，并暗示 AI 在复杂和不确定的环境中决策中起着主导作用。我们的综述进一步强调，AI 的背侧和腹侧中心以及前侧和后侧部分可能具有不同的功能，并指导行为调节的不同方面。我们在总结部分概述了理解他人行为、感受和想法的不同途径，强调了 AI 的主要作用是理解他人的感受和身体状态，而不是他们的行动意图或抽象信念。
