All parts of the brain › Functions › Disgust

What part of the brain controls disgust?

No single part, but the anterior insula comes closest: it is active both when you feel disgust, at a foul smell, and when you see disgust on someone else’s face, with the anterior cingulate cortex joining in more weakly. [1][2][3]

The insula, the putamen, the amygdala and the cingulate gyrus lit in red on a 3D model of the brain, seen from the front left and above

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Lit: whole parts; region borders not drawn.

Slice

All 4 parts are lit together. Drag to turn, pinch or scroll to zoom, tap a part on the brain or a name in the list to focus it; .

The putamen, in the basal ganglia, works with the insula in recognising disgust, and the amygdala takes part in some studies. The anterior insula is also a taste and smell area: disgust began as a reaction to offensive food. [1][2][3]

The anterior cingulate cortex is a region on a lit gyrus, not a separate shape. The 3D model draws only whole gyri, so the gyrus that holds each area is lit; the area’s exact border is not drawn.

Disgust: 4 parts lit

Insula, putamen, amygdala and cingulate gyrus. Tap one to see where it is and what it does.

The parts and their roles

Its front (anterior) part fired at the same spots when people inhaled a disgusting smell and when they watched a disgusted face; pictures of contamination and of mutilation drove it too, pictures of attacks did not. Wikipedia calls the insula the main neural structure involved in disgust. [1][4][3] Where is the insula?
Faces showing disgust engage the insula and the putamen, part of the basal ganglia, rather than the areas other expressions use; a man with damage to both on the left side reacted less to disgusting things and took disgusted faces for angry ones. [2][3] Where is the putamen?
In an fMRI study of 20 men watching film clips chosen to disgust, the left amygdala was among the disgust-specific spots, with the periaqueductal grey, the back of the pons, the left hypothalamus and the cerebellum; for disgusted faces alone an earlier study saw the insula active but not the amygdala. [5][6] Where is the amygdala?
Holds the anterior cingulate cortex, which was active, less strongly than the insula, both when people smelled something disgusting and when they watched someone else’s disgust. [1] Where is the cingulate gyrus?

Named areas on the lit gyri

Anterior cingulate cortex, on the : On the cingulate gyrus; it shared the anterior insula’s response to feeling disgust and to seeing it on a face, though more weakly. [1]

How they work together

Disgust is a reaction of rejection or revulsion to something that might be contagious, or that is offensive, distasteful or unpleasant; it is thought to have evolved as a response to offensive foods that could cause harm. [3]
Feeling it and seeing it share circuitry: the same anterior insula sites were active when people smelled a disgusting odour and when they watched video of a disgusted face, which the authors read as the observer’s brain re-creating the emotion. [1]
The anterior insula is a smell and taste centre that also handles gut sensations and automatic body responses; electrically stimulating it during brain surgery brought on nausea and an uneasy stomach. [3]
Different disgusts, different patterns: contamination and mutilation pictures both drove the anterior insula, but only mutilation also drove the right superior parietal cortex, and strong disgust faces drew in a circuit through the striatum and thalamus as well. [4][6]
Honest limit: these are networks seen in imaging and lesion studies, not single centres; there is no one ‘disgust centre’, the amygdala shows up in some studies and not in others, and the anterior cingulate cortex is a region on a lit gyrus, so whole parts are lit, not exact borders. [6][5][7]

Disgust is one of the basic emotions with its own consistent pattern in imaging: the emotions page lights the amygdala, hypothalamus, cingulate gyrus, insula and prefrontal cortex. [8] What part of the brain controls emotions?

Disgust is literally ‘bad taste’, and the anterior insula also responds to offensive tastes: the taste page lights the insula with the taste pathway that reaches it. [6] What part of the brain controls taste?

Sources

Facts describe anatomy and normal function only. A part lit here takes part in disgust; it does not do it alone, and it does other jobs too. The 3D model is the adult male BodyParts3D brain (credits and licence); on it the brainstem includes the midbrain, pons and medulla, so lighting the brainstem lights all three.