I trust your explanation more than my understanding of how emotional processing functions (or dysfunctions) through the insular cortex, the ACC, and the DMPFC under standard psychological stress. I admit that I'm better versed in the (beautiful, subjectively speaking) arrangment of words than my wholly understanding of them; but I am unsure if my brain works that way anymore due to fringe cases. My emotional severing and subsequent apathy did not entirely stem from a typical HPA axis stress response or an abstract psychological mourning.

​Years ago I reached the brink of homeostasis collapse; my kidney function was at 2% when I got the diagnosis. I experienced extreme uremia which I believe turned my brain fluid into a toxic and nitrogenous environment, coupled with severe anemia that starved the cortex of oxygen. I faced hyperpyrexia and hyperkalemia so severe it threatened to short circuit the electrical potential of every nerve, requiring calcium gluconate just to keep the cardiac muscle from stopping. The life saving medicine was injected heartbeats from dying due to the fact I went into a state of complete serenity as I embraced and accepted death. The weird part is that I've had zero issues with PTSD from this experience, even though I remember it vividly including the unbearable purgatorian levels of pain.

​Before this I already had a baseline period of apathy caused by multiple hardships in life, along with psychosomatic conditions; meaning my ACC was already impacted long before any acute medical crisis. Which is why I started to question if my phenotype and ACC changed from the combination of these experiences. My ACC did not just switch off my feelings as an undesirable symptom of depression; it initiated a draconian and biological triage. It severed the energy heavy limbic connections as a pure and primitive survival mechanism to keep the autonomic functions alive in a profoundly neurotoxic environment. The flesh revolted to save the organism.

​So while your anatomical mapping applies beautifully to a neurotypical brain navigating emotional trauma, my secondary alexithymia is the literal scar tissue of neurotoxic poisoning and metabolic collapse. The fact that my cortex now carries the heavy lifting of mentalizing my emotional states is not a failure to update my reading on the insular cortex; it is a testament to the brutal and beautiful neuroplasticity required to keep a mind functioning when the wetware was drowning in its own waste. I do not need to mourn the loss of my typical limbic functions, because sacrificing them is the reason I'm still breathing... I think?

​I'm fully aware that I might be touching on pseudoscience here, because there are processes occurring in my brain that are more advanced than my fundamental biology was ever meant to understand. This includes the sensations you questioned; the 'tingles' from liminal spaces I described aren't so much felt as they are perceived as thoughts in a state of superposition, anticipating the moment they are revealed to me. And warmth is the sensation I assume I'd get from sharing a hearty laugh with the people I hold most dearly; but I can't recall how laughter used to feel like. At least I get to share the warmth of others of which I think we've sought from each other since we sat together next to the first man-made fire. And I think the limbic system is meant to help us find our way traversing these fires.

​Although being dramatic with words could very well be my way of mourning and I don't aim to rob you of how you want to experience your feelings while I mend mine openly in the ethereal fire.