Table 1.

Studies performed in the insular cortex.

Function	Study	Method	Result	Reference
pain	human	stereotactic implantation technique	posterior IC is involved in the processing of both painful and innocuous somaesthetic inputs	(Ostrowsky et al., 2002)
	mice	electrophysiology	NMDARs contributes to neuropathic pain	(Qiu et al., 2013)
	mice	electrophysiology	AMPARs is enhanced after nerve injury	(Qiu et al., 2014)
Emotion	human	fMRI	functional connectivity between the amygdala and anterior IC relates to fear	(Yoshihara et al., 2016)
	human	PET	relation to sadness	(Damasio et al., 2000)
	human	fMRI, PET	PTSD, social anxiety disorder and specific phobia show great activities	(Etkin and Wager, 2007)
Memory	mice	electrophysiology, CTA	LTD attenuates taste aversive memory	(Li et al., 2016)
	rats	electrophysiology (in vivo), CTA	CTA induces LTP	(Rodriguez-Duran et al., 2011)
	rats	CTA	long-term memory is inhibited by an inhibition of PKMζ	(Shema et al., 2007)
	rats	electrophysiology (in vivo), CTA	NMDAR dependent LTP is required for taste learning	(Escobar et al., 1998)
	rats	CTA	PSD-5 induction is necessary for learning novel tastes	(Elkobi et al., 2008)
	rats	CTA	only the early robust trace is maintained by a NMDA-dependent CaMKII-AMPAR pathway	(Adaikkan and Rosenblum, 2015)
	rats	electrophysiology (in vivo)	LTP contributes to taste learning	(Jones et al., 1999)
	rats	CTA	NMDARs is involved in taste learning	(Rosenblum et al., 1997)