Gong et al. (2015) — Enhanced FC and GMV of insula related to action video game playing
A downstream application of the wiki’s insula-parcellation thread, and its clearest single demonstration that the insula’s anterior/posterior functional organization is experience-dependent rather than fixed. Gong et al. take Cauda et al.’s (2011) ten insular seed ROIs and their anterior-attentive (“A-network”) / posterior-sensorimotor (“P-network”) scheme as a template, then ask whether years of action-video-game (AVG) playing — a regime that demands sustained attention plus rapid hand-eye sensorimotor coordination (~150 keyboard/mouse responses per minute) — leaves a mark on it. Comparing 27 AVG experts (regional/national champions, ≥6 years) against 30 amateurs, they find higher FC between insular subregions in experts, increased grey-matter volume in the left insula, and a rewiring in which the posterior sensorimotor insula becomes coupled to a frontal attentional node.
Why it is filed here despite not being an interoception study
The paper never measures interoception, takes no physiological recording, and treats the insula strictly as an attention/sensorimotor hub — its account of “what the insula does” is imported from Cauda and the attentional-network literature, not tested. It earns a page for two narrow reasons:
- It is a plasticity result on the exact functional axis the wiki’s insula page assumes. Most of the insular-cortex evidence is anatomical, phylogenetic, or cross-sectional-correlational; the structure’s anterior→posterior gradient is usually stated as given. Gong et al. show the functional integration between those poles, and the grey matter near their transitional seam, scales with a behavioural regime — the closest thing the wiki holds to “the insular parcellation can be moved by experience,” alongside Farb et al.’s (2007) training-induced re-routing of insular connectivity and the GMV-from-training literature (Draganski, Boyke) it cites.
- It is a real-world use of the Cauda ROI scheme. The amateurs reproduce Cauda’s A-/P-network split from the same ten ROIs, which is a small independent replication of that parcellation in a fresh 3T sample — the anterior ROIs (1,2,4,5,8) recovering the attentive network, posterior ROIs (3,7,10) the sensorimotor one, ROIs 6/9 transitional.
Read against is-interoception-domain-general, the paper is a data point for the deflationary side: here the insula is a generic attention/sensorimotor integrator with no interoceptive content invoked at all, and the account works. That is the same “the anterior insula is not an area of pure body awareness” caution Farb (2013) and Haruki & Ogawa (2023) reach from inside the interoception literature — Gong et al. reach it by never entering it.
What was found
- Functional integration up, left more than right. A dedicated index — FC between the averaged anterior and averaged posterior insular ROIs — was greater in experts bilaterally (left t=2.93, right t=2.73), but only the left integration correlated with average weekly playing time (AT; r=0.68), which is what lets the authors argue for an experience effect rather than a static group difference.
- Grey matter up in the left insula. Increased GMV in the left short insular gyri, long insular gyrus and central sulcus. The long-gyrus/central-sulcus increase — sitting near the anterior/posterior transitional subregion — correlated with both the functional-integration index (r=0.47) and playing time (r=0.56), the paper’s structural-functional bridge: more play → more grey matter at the seam → more integration across it. No such correlations in amateurs.
- A cross-network rewiring. The distinctive claim. In amateurs the bilateral MFG (an attentive-network node) links to anterior insular ROIs, as expected. In experts the MFG instead links to the posterior (sensorimotor) ROIs — read as the attentional and sensorimotor networks becoming integrated, with a shorter graph path between MFG and sensorimotor cortex in experts. This is the mechanism the paper proposes for the behavioural profile (attention essential for sensorimotor performance).
The load-bearing caveat: cross-sectional, so causation is assumed not shown
Everything rests on an expert-vs-amateur contrast, which cannot separate “AVG playing sculpted the insula” from “people with this insula become AVG champions.” The AT correlations inside the expert group are the only evidence tilting toward experience, and they are still correlational. The authors are candid about this and state a longitudinal training study is underway — the wiki holds no follow-up. Treat the plasticity reading as the authors’ favoured interpretation of a correlational design, not an established causal effect. See resting-state-functional-connectivity for the standing method caveats (non-directional FC, motion sensitivity), which apply on top.