Published in:
01-06-2010 | Editorial
Once an island, now the focus of attention
Author:
A. D. Craig
Published in:
Brain Structure and Function
|
Issue 5-6/2010
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Excerpt
The insula (originally called the “island of Reil”) is emerging from its hiding place inside of the human brain. It is easy to find articles and textbooks which show the lateral aspect of the brain but barely mention the insula, if at all (
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brain_basics/know_your_brain.htm) or treat it as a deep brain structure, like the amygdala (
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circuits). In fact, in Brodmann’s famous map of cortical cytoarchitectonic areas, it was not even worthy of a number! [See Kurth et al. 2009, PMID: 19822572; Brodmann (1909) described only a posterior granular and an anterior agranular region in the human insular cortex.] Older neuroscientists remember the insula as a portion of the visceral brain, based on prominent writings by Penfield, Mesulam, Saper, and others (Penfield and Faulk
1955; Mesulam and Mufson
1982; Saper
2002); some investigators simply call it a multi-modal region and cite the brief reviews by Augustine (
1985,
1996); but for many new investigators who find it unexpectedly activated in their functional imaging study, it is simply an enigma. …
