Topic: 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations

Understanding internal states is a prominent challenge in neuroscience, particularly when it comes to defining and expressing emotions across different species. The brain mechanisms responsible for driving evolutionarily conserved behaviors tied to internal states remain elusive. Ticklishness, a unique sensation observed in social species ranging from rodents to humans, is characterized by the emission of appetitive 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations in response to tickling. Previous research (Ishiyama & Brecht, 2016) identified the activation of the trunk somatosensory cortex (S1) during tic

The measurement of emotional responses in experimental animals is essential for understanding the neural mechanisms underlying sensory perception. Here, we investigated the utility of 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) as an indicator of pleasurable emotions related to palatable food consumption in rats. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rat pairs were presented with chocolate, and their USVs were recorded and analyzed using DeepSqueak. The spectrogram of 50 kHz USVs was compared between the anticipatory and consumption phases. Regarding the spectrogram, a decrease in frequency range during the co