Insula at a glance
- What it is
- The insula is a cortical region buried deep within the lateral sulcus, covered by the frontal, parietal and temporal opercula.
- Location
- It lies deep to the lateral sulcus, overlying the claustrum, extreme capsule and lentiform nucleus.
- Function
- It processes taste, visceral and bodily sensation (interoception), pain, and contributes to autonomic and emotional regulation and to speech articulation.
- Body system
- Nervous · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA72978 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Sometimes called the insular lobe.
- Contains primary gustatory cortex.
- Supplied by branches of the middle cerebral artery.
Structures next to the insula
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Putamen · nervous
- Globus pallidus · nervous
- Internal capsule · nervous
- Caudate nucleus · nervous
- Anterolateral central branch of middle cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- White matter of cerebral hemisphere · nervous
- Cingulate gyrus · nervous
- Sphenoid part of middle cerebral artery · cardiovascular
- Stria terminalis · nervous
- Amygdala · nervous
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Insula (FMA72978). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
- OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §12.1 Basic Structure and Function of the Nervous System. Rice University, 2022.
- Mitsuhashi N. et al. (2009). BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 37, D782–D785. Data © The Database Center for Life Science, CC BY 4.0.
Related anatomy
Explore the whole body in the interactive 3D human anatomy model, or browse the A–Z list of human structures.