RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 The Embodiment of Emotional Feelings in the Brain JF The Journal of Neuroscience JO J. Neurosci. FD Society for Neuroscience SP 12878 OP 12884 DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1725-10.2010 VO 30 IS 38 A1 Harrison, Neil A. A1 Gray, Marcus A. A1 Gianaros, Peter J. A1 Critchley, Hugo D. YR 2010 UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/30/38/12878.abstract AB Central to Walter Cannon's challenge to peripheral theories of emotion was that bodily arousal responses are too undifferentiated to account for the wealth of emotional feelings. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, this remains widely accepted and for nearly a century has left the issue of whether visceral afferent signals are essential for emotional experience unresolved. Here we combine functional magnetic resonance imaging and multiorgan physiological recording to dissect experience of two distinct disgust forms and their relationship to peripheral and central physiological activity. We show that experience of core and body–boundary–violation disgust are dissociable in both peripheral autonomic and central neural responses and also that emotional experience specific to anterior insular activity encodes these different underlying patterns of peripheral physiological responses. These findings demonstrate that organ-specific physiological responses differentiate emotional feeling states and support the hypothesis that central representations of organism physiological homeostasis constitute a critical aspect of the neural basis of feelings.