Citation

Klucken T, Schweckendiek J, Koppe G, Merz JC, Kagerer S, Walter B, Gebhard S, Vaitl D, Stark R. Neuroscience 2012; 201: 209-218.

Affiliation

Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, University of Giessen, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, International Brain Research Organization, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.neuroscience.2011.11.007

PMID

22108614

Abstract

The understanding of individual differences in responses to disgusting stimuli is important to gain more insight into the development of certain psychiatric disorders. The aim of this study was to investigate conditioned disgust responses and its potential overlap with conditioned fear responses and the influence of disgust sensitivity on BOLD responses. Yet even though current studies report evidence that disgust sensitivity is a vulnerability factor, the knowledge about the underlying neural mechanisms remains very limited. Two groups were exposed either to a disgust- or fear-conditioning paradigm. Using fMRI, we identified a conjoint activated network including the dorsal cingulate cortex, the nucleus accumbens, the orbitofrontal cortex, and the occipital cortex within the disgust- and the fear-conditioning group. Moreover, we report evidence of increased insula activation in the disgust-conditioning group. In addition, functional connectivity analysis revealed increased interconnections, most pronounced within the insula in the high disgust sensitivity group compared with low disgust sensitivity group. The conjunction results suggest that the conditioned responses in disgust and fear conditioning recruit the same neural network, implicating that different conditioned responses of aversive learning depend on a common neural network. Increased insula activation within the disgust-conditioning group might be attributable to heightened interoceptive processes, which might be more pronounced in disgust. Finally, the findings regarding disgust sensitivity are discussed with respect to vulnerability factors for certain psychiatric disorders.

Language: en