Topic: affective learning

Affective responses involve assessing the value of environmental cues signaling potential threats or rewards. However, when encountering novel cues, their affective value is uncertain. To overcome this uncertainty, the brain likely creates abstract representations of the environment, linking external stimuli with internal bodily states. However, the exact mechanisms underlying the formation of these affective models remain largely unknown. The insula, known as the primary interoceptive cortex, is a promising area where the associations between environmental cues (conditioned stimuli, CS) and b