scholarly journals Insular Cortex Projections to Nucleus Accumbens Core Mediate Social Approach to Stressed Juvenile Rats

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan M. Rogers-Carter ◽  
Anthony Djerdjaj ◽  
Katherine B. Gribbons ◽  
Juan A. Varela ◽  
John P. Christianson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Nucleus Accumbens ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Insular Cortex ◽  
Male Rat ◽  
Nucleus Accumbens Core ◽  
Social Approach ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Social Decision Making ◽  
Accumbens Core

Social interactions are shaped by features of the interactants including age, emotion, sex and familiarity. Age-specific responses to social affect are evident when an adult male rat is presented with a pair of unfamiliar male conspecifics, one of which is stressed via 2 footshocks and the other naïve to treatment. Adult test rats prefer to interact with stressed juvenile (PN30) conspecifics, but avoid stressed adult (PN50) conspecifics. This pattern depends upon the insular cortex (IC) which is anatomically connected to the nucleus accumbens core (NAc). The goal of this work was to test the necessity of IC projections to NAc during social affective behavior. Here, bilateral pharmacological inhibition of the NAc with tetrodotoxin (1µM; 0.5ul/side) abolished the preference for stressed PN30, but did not alter interactions with PN50 conspecifics. Using a combination of retrograding tracing and c-Fos immunohistochemistry, we report that social interactions with stressed PN30 conspecifics elicit greater Fos immunoreactivity in IC → NAc neurons than interactions with naïve PN30 conspecifics. Chemogenetic stimulation of IC terminals in the NAc increased social exploration with juvenile, but not adult, conspecifics, while chemogenetic inhibition of this tract blocked the preference to investigate stressed PN30 conspecifics, which expands upon our previous finding that optogenetic inhibition of IC projection neurons mediated approach and avoidance. These new findings suggest that outputs of IC to the NAc modulate social approach, which provides new insight to the neural circuitry underlying social decision-making.Significance StatementSocial decision-making underlies an animal’s behavioral response to others in a range of social contexts. Previous findings indicate the insular cortex (IC) and the nucleus accumbens (NAc) play important roles in a range of social behaviors, and human neuroimaging implicates both IC and NAc in autism and other psychiatric disorders characterized by aberrant social cognition. To test whether IC projections to the NAc are involved in social decision making, circuit-specific chemogenetic manipulations demonstrated that the IC → NAc pathway mediates social approach toward distressed juvenile, but not adult, conspecifics. This finding is the first to implicate this circuit in rodent socioemotional behaviors and may be a neuroanatomical substrate for integration of emotion with social reward.

scholarly journals Insular Cortex Projections to Nucleus Accumbens Core Mediate Social Approach to Stressed Juvenile Rats

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (44) ◽  
pp. 8717-8729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan M. Rogers-Carter ◽  
Anthony Djerdjaj ◽  
K. Bates Gribbons ◽  
Juan A. Varela ◽  
John P. Christianson
Keyword(s):  
Nucleus Accumbens ◽  
Insular Cortex ◽  
Nucleus Accumbens Core ◽  
Social Approach ◽  
Juvenile Rats ◽  
Accumbens Core

scholarly journals Value computations underlying human proposer behaviour in the Ultimatum Game

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erdem Pulcu ◽  
Masahiko Haruno
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Ultimatum Game ◽  
Social Value Orientation ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Optimal Decisions ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Social Decision Making

AbstractInteracting with others to decide how finite resources should be allocated between parties which may have competing interests is an important part of social life. Considering that not all of our proposals to others are always accepted, the outcomes of such social interactions are, by their nature, probabilistic and risky. Here, we highlight cognitive processes related to value computations in human social interactions, based on mathematical modelling of the proposer behavior in the Ultimatum Game. Our results suggest that the perception of risk is an overarching process across non-social and social decision-making, whereas nonlinear weighting of others’ acceptance probabilities is unique to social interactions in which others’ valuation processes needs to be inferred. Despite the complexity of social decision-making, human participants make near-optimal decisions by dynamically adjusting their decision parameters to the changing social value orientation of their opponents through influence by multidimensional inferences they make about those opponents (e.g. how prosocial they think their opponent is relative to themselves).

scholarly journals Pair Bond-Induced Affiliation and Aggression in Male Prairie Voles Elicit Distinct Functional Connectivity in the Social Decision-Making Network

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle R. Gossman ◽  
Benjamin Dykstra ◽  
Byron H. García ◽  
Arielle P. Swopes ◽  
Adam Kimbrough ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Prairie Voles ◽  
Correlation Pattern ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Social Encounter ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Decision Making

Complex social behaviors are governed by a neural network theorized to be the social decision-making network (SDMN). However, this theoretical network is not tested on functional grounds. Here, we assess the organization of regions in the SDMN using c-Fos, to generate functional connectivity models during specific social interactions in a socially monogamous rodent, the prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster). Male voles displayed robust selective affiliation toward a female partner, while exhibiting increased threatening, vigilant, and physically aggressive behaviors toward novel males and females. These social interactions increased c-Fos levels in eight of the thirteen brain regions of the SDMN. Each social encounter generated a distinct correlation pattern between individual brain regions. Thus, hierarchical clustering was used to characterize interrelated regions with similar c-Fos activity resulting in discrete network modules. Functional connectivity maps were constructed to emulate the network dynamics resulting from each social encounter. Our partner functional connectivity network presents similarities to the theoretical SDMN model, along with connections in the network that have been implicated in partner-directed affiliation. However, both stranger female and male networks exhibited distinct architecture from one another and the SDMN. Further, the stranger-evoked networks demonstrated connections associated with threat, physical aggression, and other aversive behaviors. Together, this indicates that distinct patterns of functional connectivity in the SDMN can be detected during select social encounters.

The Neurobiology of Trust and Social Decision-Making

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan B. Engelmann ◽  
Ernst Fehr
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Neuroscience ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
Social Decision Making ◽  
Economic Considerations

There is accumulating evidence suggesting that emotions can have a strong impact on social decision-making. However, the neural mechanisms of emotional influences on choice are less well understood to date. This chapter integrates recent results from two independent but related research streams in social neuroeconomics and social neuroscience, which together identify the neural mechanisms involved in the influences of emotions on social choice. Specifically, research in social neuroeconomics has shown that social decisions, such as trust-taking, involve commonly ignored emotional considerations in addition to economic considerations related to payouts. These results are paralleled by recent findings in social neuroscience that underline the role of emotions in social interactions. Because anticipatory emotions associated with social approval and rejection can have important, but often ignored, influences on social choices the integration of emotions into theories of social decision-making is necessary.

scholarly journals Nucleus accumbens activation is linked to salience in social decision making

2018 ◽  
Vol 269 (6) ◽  
pp. 701-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie N. L. Schmidt ◽  
Sabrina C. Fenske ◽  
Peter Kirsch ◽  
Daniela Mier
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Nucleus Accumbens ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Social Decision Making

scholarly journals Insular cortex corticotropin-releasing factor integrates stress signaling with social decision making.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel S Rieger ◽  
Juan A Varela ◽  
Alexandra J Ng ◽  
Lauren Granata ◽  
Anthony Djerdjaj ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Pyramidal Neurons ◽  
Cannabinoid Receptor ◽  
Insular Cortex ◽  
Corticotropin Releasing Factor ◽  
Female Rats ◽  
Social Investigation ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Male And Female Rats ◽  
Social Decision Making

Impairments in social cognition manifest in a variety of psychiatric disorders, making the neurobiological mechanisms underlying social decision making of particular translational importance. The insular cortex is consistently implicated in stress-related social and anxiety disorders, which are associated with diminished ability to make and use inferences about the emotions of others to guide behavior. We investigated how corticotropin releasing factor (CRF), a neuromodulator evoked by both self and social stressors, influenced the insula. In acute slices from male and female rats, CRF depolarized insular pyramidal neurons. In males, but not females, CRF suppressed presynaptic GABAergic inhibition leading to greater excitatory synaptic efficacy in a CRF receptor 1 (CRF1) and cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1) dependent fashion. In males only, insular CRF increased social investigation, and CRF1 and CB1 antagonists interfered with social decision making. To investigate the molecular and cellular basis for the effect of CRF we examined insular CRF1 and CB1 mRNAs and found greater total insula CRF1 mRNA in females but greater CRF1 and CB1 mRNA colocalization in male insular cortex glutamatergic neurons which suggest complex, sex-specific organization of CRF and endocannabinoid systems. Together these results reveal a new sex-specific mechanism by which stress and affect contribute to social decision making.

scholarly journals Social reward, punishment and prosociality in paranoia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nichola Raihani ◽  
Daniel Martinez-Gatell ◽  
Vaughan Bell ◽  
Lucy Foulkes
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Social Reward ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Economic Games ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Negative Social Interactions ◽  
Social Decision Making ◽  
Malicious Intent

Paranoia is the exaggerated belief that harm will occur and is intended by others. Although commonly framed in terms of attributing malicious intent to others, recent work has explored how paranoia also affects social decision-making, using economic games. Previous work found that paranoia is associated with decreased cooperation and increased punishment in the Dictator Game (where cooperating and punishing involve paying a cost to respectively increase or decrease a partner’s income). These findings suggest that paranoia might be associated with variation in subjective reward from positive and/or negative social decision-making; a possibility we explore using a pre-registered experiment with US-based participants (n=2,004). Paranoia was associated with increased self-reported enjoyment of negative social interactions and decreased self-reported enjoyment of prosocial interactions. More paranoid participants attributed stronger harmful intent to a partner. Harmful intent attributions and the enjoyment of negative social interactions positively predicted the tendency to pay to punish the partner. Cooperation was positively associated with the tendency to enjoy prosocial interactions, and increased with participant age. There was no main effect of paranoia on tendency to cooperate in this setting. We discuss these findings in light of previous research.

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