Rat Anterior Insula Symmetrically Represents Tickling-Induced Playful Emotions
Dagher, S.; Ishiyama, S.
Show abstract
Social play, an integral aspect of animal behavior, is inherently associated with positive emotions, yet the neuronal underpinnings of these playful states remain inadequately explored. We examined the anterior insulas involvement in processing tickle-induced playful emotions in rats. Our findings revealed diverse patterns of insular activity during tickling, with 20% of the recorded units displaying strong activation, and another 20% exhibiting inhibition. These units responded similarly to other playful contexts, such as gentle touch and hand chase, but not to neutral locomotion. Tickle-activated units demonstrated a positive correlation of firing rates with appetitive vocalization rates, whereas tickle-inhibited units showed a negative correlation. Distinct spike waveforms were associated with the tickle response patterns, suggesting potential cell-type dependencies. However, pharmacological manipulation of the global anterior insula did not yield observable effects on play behavior in rats. Anterograde tracing revealed extensive insular projections to areas including the amygdala and nucleus accumbens. Taken together, our findings suggest that the anterior insula symmetrically represents tickle-induced playful emotional states.
Matching journals
The top 9 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
- A new insight into the role of CART peptide in serotonergic function and anxiety 96%
- A critical role for trkB signaling in the adult function of parvalbumin interneurons and prefrontal network dynamics 94%
- Abnormal local cortical functional connectivity due to interneuron dysmaturation after neonatal intermittent hypoxia 94%
Similar papers in this journal
- Periaqueductal gray activates antipredatory neural responses in the amygdala of foraging rats 95%
- Chemo- and optogenetic activation of hypothalamic Foxb1-expressing neurons and their terminal endings in the rostral-dorsolateral PAG leads to tachypnea, bradycardia, and immobility. 95%
- Sex-dependent noradrenergic modulation of premotor cortex during decision making 94%
Similar papers in this journal
Similar papers in this journal
- Entrainment of network activity by closed-loop microstimulation in healthy ambulatory rats 94%
- Cholinergic forebrain activation improves cognition, boosts neurotrophin receptors, and lowers Aβ42 levels in the cerebral cortex of 5xFAD mice. 94%
- The developmental changes in intrinsic and synaptic properties of prefrontal neurons enhance local network activity from the second to the third postnatal week 93%
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.