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Original Articles

Disgust: Sensory affect or primary emotional system?

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Pages 1799-1818 | Received 30 Jan 2006, Published online: 12 Nov 2007
 

Abstract

We argue in this paper for the inclusion in the primary emotional systems enumerated by Panksepp of a neural system that organises disgust responses. The DISGUST system arose phylogenetically in response to danger to the internal milieu from pathogens and their toxic products. We suggest that the primitive emotive circuit, which originally provided defence by regulating consummatory behaviours, gave rise to a primary emotional system that facilitates evaluation of reinforcers. Unlike the sensory affect of distaste from which it is experimentally dissociable, disgust responses can involve flexible learned components triggered by several modalities. The anterior insula is implicated as playing a major role in the DISGUST system both in organising disgust responses in the individual and recognising disgust responses in others.

Notes

1We follow Panksepp in the use of capitals to denote an emotional organising system rather than an emotion per se.

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