Impaired Recognition and Experience of Disgust Following Brain Injury

Huntington's disease can particularly affect people's recognition of disgust from facial expressions, and functional neuroimaging research has demonstrated that facial expressions of disgust consistently engage different brain areas (insula and putamen) than other facial expressions. However, it is not known whether these particular brain areas process only facial signals of disgust or disgust signals from multiple modalities. Here we describe evidence, from a patient with insula and putamen damage, for a neural system for recognizing social signals of disgust from multiple modalities.