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 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.

Cytoarchitectural impairments in the medium spiny neurons of the Nucleus Accumbens core of hyperactive juvenile rats

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 475-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. González-Burgos ◽  
S. García-Martínez ◽  
D.A. Velázquez-Zamora ◽  
R. Ponce-Rolón
Keyword(s):  
Nucleus Accumbens ◽  
Medium Spiny Neurons ◽  
Nucleus Accumbens Core ◽  
Juvenile Rats ◽  
Spiny Neurons ◽  
Accumbens Core

The contribution of medium spiny neuron subtypes in the nucleus accumbens core to compulsive-like ethanol drinking

2021 ◽  
Vol 187 ◽  
pp. 108497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Sneddon ◽  
Kristen M. Schuh ◽  
John W. Frankel ◽  
Anna K. Radke
Keyword(s):  
Nucleus Accumbens ◽  
Medium Spiny Neuron ◽  
Nucleus Accumbens Core ◽  
Ethanol Drinking ◽  
Accumbens Core
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