hub mediating dynamic switching between DMN and ECN activity as dictated by task-events and also occurring intrinsically “at rest” 3. They further postulated that such network switching is facilitated by a set of specialized spindle neurons (Allman et al., 2011), found exclusively, and in high quantities, within the human anterior insula and dorsal ACC underlying fast, adaptive switching of the prevailing dominant network state. More recently, the same research group has shown that insula’s causal influence on DMN and ECN nodes matures over the course of normal development, as does the underlying structural connectivity between such regions (Uddin et al., 2011). Further suggesting insula’s role in “toggling” between DMN and TPN, Hamilton and coworkers (2011) have reported insular engagement at points of transition between prevailing DMN or TPN activity in patients suffering from major depressive disorder and healthy controls. From a drug abuse perspective, the proposal that the SN orients attention to the most homeostatically-relevant source of information arising from endogenous or exogenous stimuli (Seeley et al., 2007) may provide one parsimonious neurobiological account of some of the cognitive deficits often noted, not only in abstinent-smokers, but also in other drug using cohorts (Garavan and Stout, 2005; Verdejo-García et al.,
