scholarly journals Harm to others acts as a cingulate dependent negative reinforcer in rat

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julen Hernandez-Lallement ◽  
Augustine Triumph Attah ◽  
Valeria Gazzola ◽  
Christian Keysers
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Flexibility ◽  
Conduct Disorders ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Pharmacological Treatments ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Prosocial Motivation ◽  
Negative Reinforcer ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
Shed Light

SummaryEmpathy, the ability to share another individual’s emotional state and/or experience, has been suggested to be a source of prosocial motivation by making actions that harm others aversive. The neural underpinnings and evolution of such harm aversion remain poorly understood. Here, we characterize an animal model of harm aversion in which a rat can choose between two levers providing equal amounts of food, but one additionally delivering a footshock to a neighboring rat. We find that independently of sex and familiarity, rats reduce their usage of the preferred lever when it causes harm to a conspecific, displaying an individually varying degree of harm aversion. Prior experience with pain increases this effect. In additional experiments, we show that rats reduce the usage of the harm-inducing lever when it delivers twice, but not thrice the number of pellets than the non-preferred lever, setting boundaries on the magnitude of harm aversion. Finally, we show that pharmacological deactivation of the anterior cingulate cortex, a region we have shown to be essential for emotional contagion, reduces harm aversion, while leaving behavioral flexibility unaffected. This model of harm aversion might help shed light onto the neural basis of psychiatric disorders characterized by reduced harm aversion, including psychopathy and conduct disorders with reduced empathy, and provide an assay for the development of pharmacological treatments of such disorders.

scholarly journals Brain mechanisms underlying neuropsychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease: a systematic review of symptom-general and –specific lesion patterns

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaojing Chen ◽  
Mingxi Dang ◽  
Zhanjun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Neuropsychiatric Symptoms ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Preclinical Ad ◽  
Disease Stages ◽  
Mild Cognitive Impairment Stage

AbstractNeuropsychiatric symptoms (NPSs) are common in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and are associated with accelerated cognitive impairment and earlier deaths. This review aims to explore the neural pathogenesis of NPSs in AD and its association with the progression of AD. We first provide a literature overview on the onset times of NPSs. Different NPSs occur in different disease stages of AD, but most symptoms appear in the preclinical AD or mild cognitive impairment stage and develop progressively. Next, we describe symptom-general and -specific patterns of brain lesions. Generally, the anterior cingulate cortex is a commonly damaged region across all symptoms, and the prefrontal cortex, especially the orbitofrontal cortex, is also a critical region associated with most NPSs. In contrast, the anterior cingulate-subcortical circuit is specifically related to apathy in AD, the frontal-limbic circuit is related to depression, and the amygdala circuit is related to anxiety. Finally, we elucidate the associations between the NPSs and AD by combining the onset time with the neural basis of NPSs.

Translational approach to study flexibility as an endophenotype of obsessive compulsive disorders

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (S3) ◽  
pp. 546-546
Author(s):  
N. Benzina ◽  
S.L. Mondragon ◽  
N. Ouarti ◽  
L. Mallet ◽  
E. Burguiere
Keyword(s):  
Reversal Learning ◽  
Behavioral Flexibility ◽  
Repetitive Behaviors ◽  
Reward Contingency ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Compulsive Behaviors ◽  
Translational Approach ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive Disorders ◽  
Compulsive Disorders

Behavioral flexibility is the ability of a subject to change its behavior according to contextual cues. In humans, Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD) is characterized by repetitive behavior, performed through rigid rituals. This phenomenological observation has led to explore the idea that OCD patients may have diminished behavioral flexibility. To address this question we developed innovative translational approaches across multiple species, including human patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorders, and rodent genetic models of OCD to provide original data in the perspective of enlightening the neurocognitive bases of compulsive behaviors. Behavioral flexibility may be challenged in experimental tasks such as reversal learning paradigms. In these tasks, the subject has to respond to either of two different visual stimuli but only one stimulus is positively rewarded while the other is not. After this first association has been learned, reward contingency are inverted, so that the previously neutral stimulus is now rewarded, while the previously rewarded stimulus is not. Performance in reversal learning is indexed by the number of perseverative errors committed when participants maintain their response towards previously reinforced stimulus in spite of negative reward. Unsurprisingly, this behavioral task has been adapted to mice using various response modalities (T-maze, lever press, nose-poke). Using animal models of compulsive behaviors give much more possibilities to study the deficient functions and their underlying neural basis that could lead to pathological repetitive behaviors. Here we present new behavioral set-ups that we developed in parallel in human (i.e. healthy subjects and OCD patients) and mice (i.e. controls and SAPAP3-KO mice) to study the role of the behavioral flexibility as a possible endophenotype of OCD. We observed that the subjects suffering of compulsive behaviors showed perseverative maladaptive behaviors in these tasks. By comparing the results of a similar task-design in humans and mouse models we will discuss the pertinence of such translational approach to further study the neurocognitive basis of compulsive behaviors.

Neural Basis of Rhythm Perception

2018 ◽  
pp. 164-186
Author(s):  
Christina M. Vanden Bosch der Nederlanden ◽  
J. Eric T. Taylor ◽  
Jessica A. Grahn
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Auditory Information ◽  
Language Outcomes ◽  
Rhythm Perception ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Oscillatory Dynamics ◽  
Motor Excitability ◽  
Neural Underpinnings

To understand and enjoy music, it is important to be able to hear the beat and move your body to the rhythm. However, impaired rhythm processing has a broader impact on perception and cognition beyond music-specific tasks. We also experience rhythms in our everyday interactions, through the lip and jaw movements of watching someone speak, the syllabic structure of words on the radio, and in the movements of our limbs when we walk. Impairments in the ability to perceive and produce rhythms are related to poor language outcomes, such as dyslexia, and they can provide an index of a primary symptom in movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease. The chapter summarizes a growing body of literature examining the neural underpinnings of rhythm perception and production. It highlights the importance of auditory-motor relationships in finding and producing a beat in music by reviewing evidence from a number of methodologies. These approaches illustrate how rhythmic auditory information capitalizes on auditory-motor interactions to influence motor excitability, and how beat perception emerges as a function of nonlinear oscillatory dynamics of the brain. Together these studies highlight the important role of rhythm in human development, evolutionary comparisons, multi-modal perception, mirror neurons, language processing, and music.

scholarly journals Similar levels of emotional contagion in male and female rats

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingying Han ◽  
Bo Sichterman ◽  
Maria Carrillo ◽  
Valeria Gazzola ◽  
Christian Keysers
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Emotional Contagion ◽  
Female Rats ◽  
Male Rats ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Male And Female Rats ◽  
Danger Detection ◽  
Rats And Mice ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractEmotional contagion, the ability to feel what other individuals feel, is thought to be an important element of social life. In humans, emotional contagion has been shown to be stronger in women than men. Emotional contagion has been shown to exist also in rodents, and a growing number of studies explore the neural basis of emotional contagion in male rats and mice. These studies promise to shed light on the mechanisms that might go astray in psychiatric disorders characterized by dysfunctions of emotional contagion and empathy. Here we explore whether there are sex differences in emotional contagion in rats. We use an established paradigm in which a demonstrator rat receives footshocks while freezing is measured in both the demonstrator and an observer rat, which can hear, smell and see each other. By comparing pairs of male rats with pairs of female rats, we find (i) that female demonstrators freeze less when submitted to footshocks, but that (ii) the emotional contagion response, i.e. the degree of influence across the rats, does not depend on the sex of the rats. This was true whether emotional contagion was quantified based on the slope of a regression linking demonstrator and observer average freezing, or on Granger causality estimates of moment-to-moment freezing. The lack of sex differences in emotional contagion is compatible with an interpretation of emotional contagion as serving selfish danger detection.

scholarly journals Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation in Anterior Cingulate Cortex Impairs Information Sampling and Learning in Loss Contexts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kianoush Banaie Boroujeni ◽  
Michelle K Sigona ◽  
Robert Louie Treuting ◽  
Manuel J Thomas ◽  
Charles F Caskey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Behavioral Flexibility ◽  
Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Transcranial Ultrasound ◽  
Neural Signals ◽  
Visual Objects ◽  
Ultrasound Stimulation ◽  
Information Sampling

Neural activity in anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior striatum predicts which visual objects are sampled and how likely objects are paired with positive or aversive outcomes. We causally tested whether these neural signals contribute to behavioral flexibility. Disrupting with transcranial ultrasound the ACC, but not striatum, prolonged information sampling when attentional demands were high, impaired flexible learning, and reduced the ability to avoid losses. These results support a role of the ACC in guiding attention and information sampling to overcome motivational conflict during adaptive behaviors.

scholarly journals Altered fear processing in adolescents with a history of severe childhood maltreatment: an fMRI study

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 1092-1101 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Hart ◽  
L. Lim ◽  
M. A. Mehta ◽  
A. Simmons ◽  
K. A. H. Mirza ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Substance Abuse ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Childhood Maltreatment ◽  
Emotion Processing ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Psychiatric Conditions

AbstractBackgroundChildren with a history of maltreatment suffer from altered emotion processing but the neural basis of this phenomenon is unknown. This pioneering functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated the effects of severe childhood maltreatment on emotion processing while controlling for psychiatric conditions, medication and substance abuse.MethodTwenty medication-naive, substance abuse-free adolescents with a history of childhood abuse, 20 psychiatric control adolescents matched on psychiatric diagnoses but with no maltreatment and 27 healthy controls underwent a fMRI emotion discrimination task comprising fearful, angry, sad happy and neutral dynamic facial expressions.ResultsMaltreated participants responded faster to fearful expressions and demonstrated hyper-activation compared to healthy controls of classical fear-processing regions of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex, which survived at a more lenient threshold relative to psychiatric controls. Functional connectivity analysis, furthermore, demonstrated reduced connectivity between left vmPFC and insula for fear in maltreated participants compared to both healthy and psychiatric controls.ConclusionsThe findings show that people who have experienced childhood maltreatment have enhanced fear perception, both at the behavioural and neurofunctional levels, associated with enhanced fear-related ventromedial fronto-cingulate activation and altered functional connectivity with associated limbic regions. Furthermore, the connectivity adaptations were specific to the maltreatment rather than to the developing psychiatric conditions, whilst the functional changes were only evident at trend level when compared to psychiatric controls, suggesting a continuum. The neurofunctional hypersensitivity of fear-processing networks may be due to childhood over-exposure to fear in people who have been abused.

scholarly journals Selective suppression of rapid eye movement sleep increases next-day negative affect and amygdala responses to social exclusion

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Glosemeyer ◽  
Susanne Diekelmann ◽  
Werner Cassel ◽  
Karl Kesper ◽  
Ulrich Koehler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Negative Affect ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Rem Sleep ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Rapid Eye Movement ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Neural Underpinnings

Abstract Healthy sleep, positive general affect, and the ability to regulate emotional experiences are fundamental for well-being. In contrast, various mental disorders are associated with altered rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, negative affect, and diminished emotion regulation abilities. However, the neural processes mediating the relationship between these different phenomena are still not fully understood. In the present study of 42 healthy volunteers, we investigated the effects of selective REM sleep suppression (REMS) on general affect, as well as on feelings of social exclusion, cognitive reappraisal (CRA) of emotions, and their neural underpinnings. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging we show that, on the morning following sleep suppression, REMS increases general negative affect, enhances amygdala responses and alters its functional connectivity with anterior cingulate cortex during passively experienced experimental social exclusion. However, we did not find effects of REMS on subjective emotional ratings in response to social exclusion, their regulation using CRA, nor on functional amygdala connectivity while participants employed CRA. Our study supports the notion that REM sleep is important for affective processes, but emphasizes the need for future research to systematically investigate how REMS impacts different domains of affective experience and their neural correlates, in both healthy and (sub-)clinical populations.

scholarly journals Resting-State Isolated Effective Connectivity of the Cingulate Cortex as a Neurophysiological Biomarker in Patients with Severe Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Masataka Wada ◽  
Shinichiro Nakajima ◽  
Ryosuke Tarumi ◽  
Fumi Masuda ◽  
Takahiro Miyazaki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Resting State ◽  
Effective Connectivity ◽  
Treatment Resistance ◽  
Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Posterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Treatment Resistant ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Subject Factor ◽  
Post Hoc

Background: The neural basis of treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS) remains unclear. Previous neuroimaging studies suggest that aberrant connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and default mode network (DMN) may play a key role in the pathophysiology of TRS. Thus, we aimed to examine the connectivity between the ACC and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a hub of the DMN, computing isolated effective coherence (iCoh), which represents causal effective connectivity. Methods: Resting-state electroencephalogram with 19 channels was acquired from seventeen patients with TRS and thirty patients with non-TRS (nTRS). The iCoh values between the PCC and ACC were calculated using sLORETA software. We conducted four-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) for iCoh values with group as a between-subject factor and frequency, directionality, and laterality as within-subject factors and post-hoc independent t-tests. Results: The ANOVA and post-hoc t-tests for the iCoh ratio of directionality from PCC to ACC showed significant findings in delta (t45 = 7.659, p = 0.008) and theta (t45 = 8.066, p = 0.007) bands in the left side (TRS < nTRS). Conclusion: Left delta and theta PCC and ACC iCoh ratio may represent a neurophysiological basis of TRS. Given the preliminary nature of this study, these results warrant further study to confirm the importance of iCoh as a clinical indicator for treatment-resistance.

scholarly journals Medication in the treatment of alcohol dependence

1996 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 249-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Chick
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Dependence ◽  
Pharmacological Treatments ◽  
Harmful Drinking ◽  
Psychosocial Treatments ◽  
The Past ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
New Evidence

Social, cultural, emotional and biological influences determine whether people drink to excess and whether they then experience harm or cause harm to others (Cook, 1994). Psychosocial treatments for alcohol dependence are only modestly successful, with most studies finding that at least 50% of patients return to harmful drinking in the following year. In the past decade there has been new evidence for the role of pharmacological treatments in reducing harm from drinking and in preventing relapse.

scholarly journals A roadmap for the study of conscious audition and its neural basis

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1714) ◽  
pp. 20160103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Dykstra ◽  
Peter A. Cariani ◽  
Alexander Gutschalk
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Scene Analysis ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Auditory Scenes ◽  
Shed Light

How and which aspects of neural activity give rise to subjective perceptual experience—i.e. conscious perception—is a fundamental question of neuroscience. To date, the vast majority of work concerning this question has come from vision, raising the issue of generalizability of prominent resulting theories. However, recent work has begun to shed light on the neural processes subserving conscious perception in other modalities, particularly audition. Here, we outline a roadmap for the future study of conscious auditory perception and its neural basis, paying particular attention to how conscious perception emerges (and of which elements or groups of elements) in complex auditory scenes. We begin by discussing the functional role of the auditory system, particularly as it pertains to conscious perception. Next, we ask: what are the phenomena that need to be explained by a theory of conscious auditory perception? After surveying the available literature for candidate neural correlates, we end by considering the implications that such results have for a general theory of conscious perception as well as prominent outstanding questions and what approaches/techniques can best be used to address them. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Auditory and visual scene analysis’.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document