Global PCB And PCBA Market Size and Forecast
Aug 22, 2023Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) Equipment Market Size to Achieve 19.03% CAGR, Predicted Revenue of USD 2.974 Billion from 2023 to 2030
Jul 27, 2023Remarks by Vice President Harris Highlighting the Impacts of Bidenomics and Announcing Increasing Support for Small Businesses
Jul 15, 2023Best quality cotton key to resolving economic troubles
Aug 18, 2023Huntsville
Aug 04, 2023They got more than me! The brain circuit for
Researchers from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS) identify an important brain circuit for determining the value of your own reward in relation to others’ rewards
National Institutes of Natural Sciences
image: (Left) When the pathway from the medial prefrontal cortex to the lateral hypothalamus is functional, monkeys are sensitive to others’ rewards. Here, the value of one’s own reward is subjectively lowered by seeing another monkey getting more. (Right) When the same pathway is disconnected, the monkeys become much less susceptible to others’ rewards. Here, the value of one’s own reward does not change. DCZ, deschloroclozapine. view more
Credit: Masaki Isoda
Okazaki, Japan – Although you might never have consciously considered it, it’s very likely that when you receive a reward, part of the value that you place on it depends on what other people have received as similar rewards. In a recent study published in Nature Communications, Japanese researchers have identified an important brain circuit for this specific process.Although researchers have identified the brain regions that are important for deciding the value of a reward in relation to those of others (a process the authors termed ‘socially subjective reward valuation’), the connections between these regions have never been tested experimentally. The research team from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS) decided to create a temporary disconnect between the medial prefrontal cortex, which is part of the social brain network, and the lateral hypothalamus, which is involved in social reward valuation.“We used a relatively new technique that is commonly known as DREADD, or ‘designer receptor exclusively activated by designer drug’, in macaque monkeys,” says senior author of the study Masaki Isoda. “This method allowed us to temporarily block most of the connections from the brain’s medial prefrontal cortex to the lateral hypothalamus.”
To test the effects of functionally disconnecting two regions of the monkeys’ brains responsible for socially subjective reward valuation, the researchers used an existing experimental setup. Two monkeys were sat together and shown pictures on a screen. After seeing each picture, only one of the monkeys (or sometimes neither of the monkeys) received water as a reward. By varying the probability of reward for each monkey over a series of tests, the researchers were able to see what happened when the monkeys expected a reward for themselves (they made many licking motions with their tongues) versus a reward for the other monkey (they made fewer licking motions).
“Using this test, we were able to see the effects of disconnecting the medial prefrontal cortex from the lateral hypothalamus on the monkeys’ expectations of rewards,” says Isoda. “We were excited to see that, with this disconnect, the monkeys were much less susceptible to the prospect of others receiving rewards, but that their own expectations of a reward did not change, suggesting that this pathway is a key circuit in socially subjective reward valuation only.”
Together with recent research suggesting that the medial prefrontal cortex/lateral hypothalamus circuit is crucial for social rank information in mice, these results indicate that this circuit underlies many important social behaviors. A better understanding of this pathway will aid in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of injuries or alterations to the medial prefrontal cortex and lateral hypothalamus.
###The article, “Chemogenetic dissection of a prefrontal-hypothalamic circuit for socially subjective reward valuation in macaques,” was published in Nature Communications at DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40143-x.
Nature Communications
10.1038/s41467-023-40143-x.
Experimental study
Animals
Chemogenetic dissection of a prefrontal-hypothalamic circuit for socially subjective reward valuation in macaques
20-Jul-2023
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
image: (Left) When the pathway from the medial prefrontal cortex to the lateral hypothalamus is functional, monkeys are sensitive to others’ rewards. Here, the value of one’s own reward is subjectively lowered by seeing another monkey getting more. (Right) When the same pathway is disconnected, the monkeys become much less susceptible to others’ rewards. Here, the value of one’s own reward does not change. DCZ, deschloroclozapine.Disclaimer: