PRELIMBIC VERSUS ANTERIOR CINGULATE CORTEX IMPACTS IN EMOTION RECOGNITION IN MICE

Recognizing and responding to others' emotions is essential for adaptive social behavior, yet the circuit mechanisms underlying this ability remain poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that somatostatin-expressing (SOM) interneurons in the prelimbic cortex (PrL) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) play distinct roles in emotion discrimination in mice. Using a validated behavioral paradigm combined with optogenetic techniques, we discovered that stimulation of SOM neurons in either region disrupted emotional discrimination and, specifically in the case of ACC, also impaired social memory. Circuit-mapping studies showed that ACC SOM neurons project to multiple downstream targets, including the medial prefrontal cortex, the dorsal tenia tecta, and the amygdaloid regions, indicating their involvement in a distributed network spanning cognitive and limbic systems. Collectively, these findings reveal region-specific specializations of SOM interneurons in the prefrontal cortex and establish their causal role in modulating emotional behavior. More broadly, they emphasize the importance of inhibitory microcircuits within the distributed architecture of the social brain and suggest circuit-level mechanisms that may be disrupted in psychiatric disorders characterized by impairments in emotion recognition.