Key result
Continuous water ingestion decreases mid-cingulate and insular BOLD signals, correlating with reduced perceived thirst.
Why the study?
The neural structures that change activation patterns elicited by water ingestion in relation to continuous internal body state changes from thirst to satiety were not fully identified.
Does water consumption to satiety change BOLD responses in the anterior mid-cingulate cortex and right posterior insula in thirsty participants?
Does water consumption to satiety change BOLD responses in the anterior mid-cingulate cortex and right posterior insula in thirsty participants?
The anterior mid-cingulate cortex and posterior insula show dynamic changes in activation corresponding to the transition from thirst to satiety, indicating their role in representing the motivation for drinking.
aMCC and right posterior insula track dynamic thirst value; hypothesis-generating for interoceptive motivation in clinical fluid disorders.
The cingulate cortex and insula are among the neural structures whose activations have been modulated in functional imaging studies examining discrete states of thirst and drinking to satiation. Building upon these findings, the present study aimed to identify neural structures that change their pattern of activation elicited by water held in the mouth in relation to the internal body state, i.e., proportional to continuous water consumption. Accordingly, participants in a thirsty state were scanned while receiving increments of water until satiety was reached. As expected, fluid ingestion led to a clear decrease in self-reported thirst and the pleasantness ratings of the water ingested. Furthermore, linear decreases in the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response to water ingestion were observed in the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC) and right posterior insula as participants shifted towards the non-thirsty state. In addition, regions in the superior temporal gyrus (STG), supplementary motor area (SMA), superior parietal lobule (SPL), precuneus and calcarine sulcus also showed a linear decrease with increasing fluid consumption. Further analyses related single trial BOLD responses of associated regions to trial-by-trial ratings of thirst and pleasantness. Overall, the aMCC and posterior insula may be key sites of a neural network representing the motivation for drinking based on the dynamic integration of internal state and external stimuli.
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Becker et al. (2017) studied Healthy volunteers (n=24). Water ingestion vs. Within-subject changes over time (thirst to satiety) was evaluated on Linear changes in blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal in the anterior mid-cingulate cortex and right posterior insula proportional to the amount of water ingested (p=<0.001). Continuous water ingestion in thirsty individuals led to a linear decrease in BOLD signal responses in the anterior mid-cingulate cortex and right posterior insula, which correlated with trial-by-trial reductions in perceived thirst.
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