Neuropsychological studies of the effects of insula lesions on humans: summary of human neuropsychological studies examining the role of the insula either studying patients with relatively focal lesions, or studying larger groups of patients and inferring the critical lesion site for a given symptom using lesion-symptom mapping methods
| Study | Patients (n) | Mean time postonset (months) | Hemisphere | Insula region | Observations |
| Case report | |||||
| Hyman and Tranel13 | 1 | 0 | Left | Posterior | Aphasia |
| Fifer14a | 1 | – | Right | Undefined | Auditory agnosia |
| Habib et al15 | 1 | – | Bilateral | Undefined | Transient mutism, non-verbal auditory agnosia, amusia |
| Griffiths et al16 | 1 | 4 | Right | Posterior | Auditory agnosia |
| Griffiths et al17 | 1 | 12 | Left | Anterior | Amusia |
| Carota et al18a | 1 | <1 | Left | Anterior | Aphasia |
| Starr et al19a | 2 | >5 years | Left | Undefined | Hypersensitivity to pain |
| Case series | |||||
| Manes et al20 | 10 | 1–2 | Right (n=4) Left (n=6) | Undefined | Impaired verbal memory (more severe in left lesion patients) |
| Pritchard et al21 | 6 | >1 year | Right (n=1) Left (n=5) | Rostrodorsal versus non-rostrodorsal | Impaired taste recognition and magnitude estimate (taste intensity) in patients with rostrodorsal lesions |
| Greenspan et al22 | 6 | – | Right (cases BB, KB and CM) Left (cases MC, KH and JE) | Anterior (CM and JE) Posterior (MC) Retro (KH, BB and KB) | Deficits in: (1) heat pain threshold (MC and KH) (2) mechanical pain threshold (MC, KH and BB) (3) cold pain tolerance (MC and CM) (4) innocuous cool threshold MC, KH and BB) |
| Cereda et al23 | 4 | >1 | Right (cases 1 and 4) Left (cases 2 and 3) | Posterior (all) | Sensory deficits including transient pain syndrome and in other modalities (cases 2 and 4) Taste recognition deficits (case 2) Acute pseudovestibular syndrome (cases 1, 2 and 4) Somatoparaphrenia (case 4) Aphasia (cases 2 and 3) |
| Lesion symptom mapping | |||||
| Dronkers24 | 25 | – | Left | Anterior | Apraxia of Speech |
| Daniels and Foundas25 | 4 | – | Right (cases 1 and 2) Left (cases 3 and 4) | Anterior (cases 1, 2 and 3) Posterior (cases 2 and 4) | Dysphagia (cases 1, 2 and 3) |
| Manes et al26 | 9 | 2 | Right (n=4) Left (n=5) | Undefined | Neglect (tactile, auditory and visual) right > left lesions |
| Naqvi et al27 | 19 | – | Right (n=6) Left (n=13) | Undefined | Disruption of smoking addiction |
| Clark et al28 | 13 | >12 | Right (n=6) Left (n=7) | Anterior | Impaired risk adjustment |
| Weller et al29 | 10 | >3 | Right (n=5) Left (n=5) | Undefined | Impaired risk processing (insensitivity to probability) |
| Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping | |||||
| Karnath et al30 | 14 | <1 | Right | Posterior | Anosognosia for hemiplegia and hemianaesthesia |
| Borovsky et al31 | 50 | >12 | Left | Anterior | Impaired production of fluent and complex speech |
| Spinazzola et al32 | 4 | 2 | Right | Posterior | Agnosia for hemianaesthesia |
| Golay et al33 | 28 | 2 | Right | Posterior | Neglect |