ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2017
Pictures of disgusting foods and disgusted facial expressions suppress the tongue motor cortex.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Early changes in corticospinal excitability for subliminally presented fearful body postures.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Understanding COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: A Neuroscientific Protocol.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Corticobulbar activity in healthy humans and Parkinson's disease: a study protocol for a novel biomarker of motivational arousal.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Disgust Processing and Potential Relationships with Behaviors in Autism.Current psychiatry reports · 2023Review
- The Impact of the Perception of Primary Facial Emotions on Corticospinal Excitability.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- The Role of Serotonin in Fear Learning and Memory: A Systematic Review of Human Studies.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation for the Modulation of Aggressive Behavior-A Systematic Review of Randomized Sham-Controlled Studies.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Presbyphagia: Dysphagia in the elderly.World journal of clinical cases · 2023Review
- A Matter of Taste: Roles of Taste Preference on Performance and Psychological Responses during Anaerobic Exercise.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Relationship Between Sensitivity to Disgust and Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Study on Healthy Individuals.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2022Article
- The Neurobiological Correlates of Gaze Perception in Healthy Individuals and Neurologic Patients.Biomedicines · 2022Review
- Indignation for moral violations suppresses the tongue motor cortex: preliminary TMS evidence.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2022Article
- Motor Resonance Flexibility to Emotion-Enriched Context in Parkinson's Disease Patients.Behavioural neurology · 2022Article
- Metaplasticity in the human swallowing system: clinical implications for dysphagia rehabilitation.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2022Review
- The Influence of Vicarious Fear-Learning in "Infecting" Reactive Action Inhibition.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Article
- Early Right Motor Cortex Response to Happy and Fearful Facial Expressions: A TMS Motor-Evoked Potential Study.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Neuroethics: what the study of brain disorders can tell about moral behavior.AIMS neuroscience · 2021Article
- Design and Validation of Augmented Reality Stimuli for the Treatment of Cleaning Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Article
- Mapping the sequence of brain events in response to disgusting food.Human brain mapping · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The tongue holds a unique role in gustatory disgust. However, it is unclear whether the tongue representation in the motor cortex (tM1) is affected by the sight of distaste-related stimuli. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in healthy humans, we recorded tongue motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) as an index of tM1 cortico-hypoglossal excitability. MEPs were recorded while participants viewed pictures associated with gustatory disgust and revulsion (i.e. rotten foods and faces expressing distaste), non-oral-related disgusting stimuli (i.e. invertebrates like worms) and control stimuli. We found that oral-related disgust pictures suppressed tM1 cortico-hypoglossal output. This tM1 suppression was predicted by interindividual differences in disgust sensitivity. No similar suppression was found for disgusting invertebrates or when MEPs were recorded from a control muscle. These findings suggest that revulsion-eliciting food pictures trigger anticipatory inhibition mechanisms, possibly preventing toxin swallowing and contamination. A similar suppression is elicited when viewing distaste expressions, suggesting vicarious motor inhibition during social perception of disgust. Our study suggests an avoidant-defensive mechanism in human cortico-hypoglossal circuits and its 'resonant' activation in the vicarious experience of others' distaste. These findings support a role for the motor system in emotion-driven motor anticipation and social cognition.
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