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Some metaphorical expressions that are used daily, such as “brokenhearted ” or “gut feelings, ” reflect the common belief that feelings and cognitions are partly grounded in bodily responses. This idea is reflected in early philosophical writ-ings about embodiment (e.g., Descartes, 1649/1989) and was introduced to experimental psychology by William James (1884), who asserted that perception of changes in the body “as they occur is the emotion ” (pp. 189–190). Since then, there has been considerable debate about the extent to which feel-ings and cognitions are in fact embodied. Much of this discus-sion has focused on emotion experience and decision making (e.g., Niedenthal, 2007). For example, Jamesian theory was modified to argue that emotion experience is a product of the cognitive appraisal of bodily arousal (Schachter & Singer, 1962). The somatic marker hypothesis (SMH; Damasio, 1994) proposes that emotional biasing signals emerging from the body influence intuitive decision making (see Dunn, Dalgleish, & Lawrence, 2006). These models remain controversial, and critics argue that bodily responses occur relatively late in the information-processing chain and are therefore best viewed as a consequence, rather than the cause, of cognitive-affective activity (see Moors, 2009). The ability to detect subtle changes in bodily systems, including muscles, skin, joints, and viscera, is referred to as interoception. A lamina-I spinal-thalamo-cortical pathway culminating in the insula is believed to convey signals from the primary afferents that represent the body, resulting in bodily feelings such as pain, temperature changes, itching, and visceral sensations (Craig, 2002, 2009). It has been argued that representation of the homeostatic condition of the body in the insula and related regions crucially influence