Fig. 2.

Taste and olfactory convergence in the human insular cortex. Coronal slices through the anterior insular cortex showing a small region found to receive convergent olfactory and gustatory inputs (MNI coordinates (45, 15, −9); this is the region marked by the cross-lines). a Responses to orthonasal olfactory stimuli as revealed in a conjunction analysis across a set of six odors corresponding to different affective values and compared to odorless air flow. b Responses to unimodal sucrose compared to a tasteless solution. c The same brain region is activated by a conjunctive comparison involving sucrose and a retronasally administered strawberry odor (both compared against tasteless). d Timecourses of activation corresponding to these effects, showing that these three different stimuli activate the same site in the far anterior (putatively agranular) insular cortex. The units on the abscissa are in seconds, and the units on the ordinate are percent of BOLD signal change. From de Araujo et al. (2003a)