A neurofunctional signature of subjective disgust generalizes to oral distaste and socio-moral contexts.

Journal: Nature human behaviour
PMID: 38641635

Abstract

While disgust originates in the hard-wired mammalian distaste response, the conscious experience of disgust in humans strongly depends on subjective appraisal and may even extend to socio-moral contexts. Here, in a series of studies, we combined functional magnetic resonance imaging with machine-learning-based predictive modelling to establish a comprehensive neurobiological model of subjective disgust. The developed neurofunctional signature accurately predicted momentary self-reported subjective disgust across discovery (n = 78) and pre-registered validation (n = 30) cohorts and generalized across core disgust (n = 34 and n = 26), gustatory distaste (n = 30) and socio-moral (unfair offers; n = 43) contexts. Disgust experience was encoded in distributed cortical and subcortical systems, and exhibited distinct and shared neural representations with subjective fear or negative affect in interoceptive-emotional awareness and conscious appraisal systems, while the signatures most accurately predicted the respective target experience. We provide an accurate functional magnetic resonance imaging signature for disgust with a high potential to resolve ongoing evolutionary debates.

Authors

  • Xianyang Gan
    The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
  • Feng Zhou
    Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
  • Ting Xu
    Bioresources Green Transformation Collaborative Innovation Center of Hubei Province, College of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan 430062, Hubei, China.
  • Xiaobo Liu
    Shenyang Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110169, China.
  • Ran Zhang
    Jiangsu Province Key Laboratory of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210009, China.
  • Zihao Zheng
    The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Qingyuan People's Hospital, Guangzhou Municipal and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Protein Modification and Degradation, School of Biomedical Engineering, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 511436, People's Republic of China.
  • Xi Yang
    Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics.
  • Xinqi Zhou
    Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology, Chengdu, China.
  • Fangwen Yu
    Faculty of Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences and National Engineering Research Center for Geographic Information System, Wuhan, 430074, China.
  • Jialin Li
    Graduate School, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China.
  • Ruifang Cui
    The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
  • Lan Wang
    The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China.
  • Jiajin Yuan
    Sichuan Key Laboratory of Psychology and Behavior of Discipline Inspection and Supervision, Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu, China.
  • DeZhong Yao
    The Key Laboratory for Neuro Information of Ministry of Education, Center for Information in Bio Medicine, High-Field Magnetic Resonance Brain Imaging Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
  • Benjamin Becker
    Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology, Chengdu, China.

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