Insular activity during passive viewing of aversive stimuli reflects individual differences in state negative affect Katja Mériau a,b,c, * , Isabell Wartenburger a,e , Philipp Kazzer a , Kristin Prehn a,b,c , Arno Villringer a,d , Elke van der Meer b , Hauke R. Heekeren a,c,d a Berlin NeuroImaging Center, Neuroscience Research Center & Department of Neurology, Charité University Medicine Berlin, Campus Mitte, Berlin, Germany b Department of Psychology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany c Max – Planck – Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany d Max – Planck – Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany e Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany article info Article history: Accepted 20 May 2008 Available online 15 July 2008 Keywords: fMRI Psychophysiology Salience Female Skin conductance Interoception Valence Bodily state abstract People differ with regard to how they perceive, experience, and express negative affect. While trait neg- ative affect reflects a stable, sustained personality trait, state negative affect represents a stimulus limited and temporally acute emotion. So far, little is known about the neural systems mediating the relationship between negative affect and acute emotion processing. To address this issue we investigated in a healthy female sample how individual differences in state negative affect are reflected in changes in blood oxygen level-dependent responses during passive viewing of emotional stimuli. To assess autonomic arousal we simultaneously recorded changes in skin conductance level. At the psychophysiological level we found increased skin conductance level in response to aversive relative to neutral pictures. However, there was no association of state negative affect with skin conductance level. At the neural level we found that high state negative affect was associated with increased left insular activity during passive viewing of aversive stimuli. The insula has been implicated in interoceptive processes and in the integration of sen- sory, visceral, and affective information thus contributing to subjective emotional experience. Greater recruitment of the insula in response to aversive relative to neutral stimuli in subjects with high state negative affect may represent increased processing of salient aversive stimuli. Ó 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Perception, experience, and expression of emotions are subject to great interindividual variability. The identification of the neural correlates of these aspects of emotions may therefore crucially de- pend on the specific sample and their characteristics in emotion processing (Eugene et al., 2003; Friston et al., 1997). Accordingly, findings from neuroimaging studies concerning the neural corre- lates of emotions are often inconsistent. Relating individual differ- ences in emotional reactivity or emotional experience to brain imaging data derived from group analyses will not only aid to clar- ify conflicting findings but may reveal the precise nature of neural mechanisms involved in emotion processing (Canli, 2004; David- son & Irwin, 1999; Hamann & Canli, 2004; Meriau et al., 2006; Thompson-Schill, Braver, & Jonides, 2005). When individuals are asked to report on their emotional states, negative affect emerges as a higher order factor in facto- rial analyses and generally reflects the extent to which a person reports feeling upset or unpleasantly aroused (Watson & Telle- gen, 1985). Negative affect can be differentiated into trait and state negative affect and is a common factor of both anxiety and depression (Clark & Watson, 1991). Trait negative affect re- flects a stable personality trait, that is, a negative emotional acti- vation, which is sustained and not bound to discrete cues. In contrast, state negative affect is stimulus limited and a tempo- rally acute emotion. At the neural level individual differences in trait negative affect have been associated with increased cerebral blood flow during resting state in the bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Zald, Mattson, & Pardo, 2002) and in the amygdala (Abercrombie et al., 1998). Greater increases in amygdala response during active main- tenance of a negative mood are associated with subjects’ self-re- ported trait negative affect (Schaefer et al., 2002). Trait negative affect may be implemented by plastic changes of the brain, whereas a momentary change of mood (i.e., state negative affect) allowing for short-lived cognitive, behavioral and physiological adaptation may be differentially represented. However, so far it re- mains unclear how individual differences in state negative affect are instantiated at the neural level. 0278-2626/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2008.05.006 * Corresponding author. Address: Berlin NeuroImaging Center, Neuroscience Research Center, Department of Neurology, Charité University Medicine Berlin, Campus Mitte, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany. Fax: +49 30 450560952. E-mail address: katja.meriau@gmail.com (K. Mériau). Brain and Cognition 69 (2009) 73–80 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Brain and Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/b&c