Rotten to the core–a neural signature of subjective core disgust generalizes to sociomoral contexts

COEX 

Recent affective and clinical neuroscience perspectives propose a paradigm shift towards subjective and conscious emotional experiences (Kyzar et al, 2023; LeDoux et al., 2017; Wager et al., 2018; Zhou et al., 2021). However, neurobiological models that accurately describe the respective neural representations are scarce. Disgust originates in the hard-wired mammalian distaste reflex, but in humans its conscious emotional experience is strongly shaped by subjective appraisal and may extend to sociomoral contexts. Here, we combined functional MRI with recent methodological advances in multivariate pattern analytic neural decoding techniques to develop an accurate and generalizable whole-brain signature predictive of momentary self-reported subjective disgust experience, and in turn utilize the neural disgust signature to test the evolutionary perspective on disgust.