Disgust as a primary emotional system and its clinical relevance

Alexey Tolchinsky; George F R Ellis; Michael Levin; Šárka Kaňková; Jeffrey S Burgdorf

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1454774

Disgust as a primary emotional system and its clinical relevance

Front Psychol. 2024 Aug 28:15:1454774. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1454774. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Alexey Tolchinsky¹, George F R Ellis², Michael Levin³, Šárka Kaňková⁴, Jeffrey S Burgdorf⁵

Affiliations

¹ Professional Psychology Program, George Washington University, Washington, DC, United States.
² Department of Mathematics, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
³ Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA, United States.
⁴ Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czechia.
⁵ Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States.

Abstract

This paper advocates for considering disgust as a primary emotional system within Panksepp's Affective Neuroscience framework, which has the potential to improve the efficacy of psychotherapy with obsessive-compulsive disorder, hypochondriasis, and emetophobia. In 2007, Toronchuk and Ellis provided comprehensive evidence that DISGUST system, as they defined it, matched all Panksepp's criteria for a primary emotional system. A debate ensued and was not unambiguously resolved. This paper is an attempt to resume this discussion and supplement it with the data that accumulated since then on DISGUST's relationship with the immune system and the role of DISGUST dysregulation in psychopathology. We hope that renewed research interest in DISGUST has the potential to improve clinical efficacy with hard-to-treat conditions.

Keywords: OCD; active inference; affective neuroscience; disgust; immune system; psychopathology; psychotherapy.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. ML gratefully acknowledges support from the Elisabeth Giauque Trust, London, and Grant 62212 from the John Templeton Foundation. ŠK acknowledges support from the Czech Science Foundation, project GAČR 23-05519S. GE acknowledges support from the University of Cape Town Research Committee.