it is involved in the processing of norm violations, emotional processing, empathy, and orgasms. The insula is active during social decision making. Tiziana Quarto et al. measured emotional intelligence (EI) (the ability to identify, regulate, and process emotions of themselves and of others) of sixty-three healthy subjects. Using fMRI EI was measured in correlation with left insular activity. The subjects were shown various pictures of facial expressions and tasked with deciding to approach or avoid the person in the picture. The results of the social decision task yielded that individuals with high EI scores had left insular activation when processing fearful faces. Individuals with low EI scores had left insular activation when processing angry faces. Emotions The insular cortex, in particular its most anterior portion, is considered a limbic-related cortex. The insula has increasingly become the focus of attention for its role in body representation and subjective emotional experience. In particular, Antonio Damasio has proposed that this region plays a role in mapping visceral states that are associated with emotional experience, giving rise to conscious feelings. This is in essence a neurobiological formulation of the ideas of William James, who first proposed that subjective emotional experience (i.e., feelings) arise from our brain's interpretation of bodily states that are elicited by emotional events. This is an example of embodied cognition. In terms of function, the insula is believed to process convergent information to produce an emotionally relevant context for sensory experience. To be specific, the anterior insula is related more to olfactory, gustatory, viscero-autonomic, and limbic function, whereas the posterior insula is related more to auditory-somesthetic-skeletomotor function. Functional imaging experiments have revealed that the insula has an important role in pain experience and the experience of a number of basic emotions, including anger, fear, disgust, happiness, and sadness. The anterior insular cortex (AIC) is believed to be responsible for emotional feelings, including maternal and romantic love, anger, fear, sadness, happiness, sexual arousal, disgust, aversion, unfairness, inequity, indignation, uncertainty, disbelief, social exclusion, trust, empathy, sculptural beauty, a ‘state of union with God’, and hallucinogenic states. Functional imaging studies have also implicated the insula in conscious desires, such as food craving and drug craving. What is common to all of these emotional states is that they each change the body in some way and are associated with highly salient subjective qualities. The insula is well-situated for the integration of information relating to bodily