Interoceptive grounding of Social and Emotion concepts: an rTMS study

According to embodied cognition, abstract concepts are perceptually grounded in Interoception, which is supported by Anterior Insula (AI). In this rTMS study, we investigated the role of the left and right AI in cardiac interoception and semantic processing of three categories of concepts: Social and Emotion concepts for the abstract domain, Objects for the concrete domain. Semantic ratings were also collected for all abstract concepts on emotion and social dimensions. TMS conditions and E-field AI ROI analyses showed that right AI stimulation significantly interfered with both cardiac interoception and processing of abstract concepts higher in the emotion and social dimensions. Cardiac interoception and semantic results confirmed the role of the right AI in interoceptive awareness and socio-emotional processing, respectively, in line with an embodied view of abstract concepts, whereby abstract concepts engage areas representing the corresponding experiential modality. Taken together, these results suggest that interoceptive and semantic processes converge on the right AI, where we hypothesise that interoceptive states inform semantic decisions providing a perceptually grounded representation of emotional and social concepts.