The insula is a brain region that has been linked to a range of functions, including emotional responsnes. Work done by our lab found that insula activaion during viewing of contaminated food was positively correlated with a disgust sensitivity score. While the insula has a broad role in the disgust response, one possibility for this finding is that insula activation is associated with negative emotions generally, versus disgust sensitivity specifically. Thus, we hypothesized that the insula activation would be correlated with the emotions of both hunger and depression. Usign previously acquired fMRI data set of 34 participants, we measured insula activation while subjects viewed contamintated foods. We analyzed the correlation between scores from a Grand Hunger Scale and Beck Depression Inventory along with levels of insula activation using SPSS software. The results indicated a significant Pearson correlation of Hunger Scale with brain activation for left insula (r=.350; p=.043) and a trend toward significance for the right insula (r=.322; p=.064) for the right insula. There were no significant or trend level associations of Beck Depression Inventory score with insula activation. This finding provides evidence for the insula being associated to hunger, with little to no correlation to depression in insula activation levels.
