Topic: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex

Animals encounter several dangerous situations during their lives, in response to which appropriate defensive responses are essential for survival. The selection of a proper defensive response to cope with each dangerous encounter relies not only on the recognition of specific threat characteristics and its context, but also on the detection of features shared by different threats. With a novel paradigm that exposes mice to multiple threatening situations, we recently demonstrated that neuronal populations in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) encode both a general danger state and spec

Sequential decision-making in a dynamic environment requires foresight into future states often influenced by other agents. This study seeks to uncover the neural correlates underlying the computation of self and opponent action values in the brain. To achieve this, rhesus monkeys were trained in a competitive strategy board game, called “four-in-a-row,” in which they placed a series of stones on a 4-by-9 board, taking turns with a computer opponent. In this game, players win by placing a series of four stones horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, and the animal was rewarded only for winnin

In humans with alcohol use disorders (AUD), stress often triggers craving and relapse to alcohol drinking. This characteristic can be modeled in laboratory using stress-induced reinstatement. Here, we showed that in both male and female rats, an increased sensitivity to develop stress-induced reinstatement is promoted by decreased expression of Prdm2, a gene that encodes histone methyltransferase, due to alcohol-induced DNA hypermethylation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). Consistent with our preclinical data, we found that humans with AUD had lowered PRDM2 expression in the prefr

Social status affects health by influencing the capacity of the immune system to respond to infection and disease. However, the neuronal mechanisms that explain how social status causes individual differences in immunity are unknown. In this study, we observed that among social groups of four male mice, those ranked second in hierarchy display superior T-cell expansion upon vaccination. The improved T-cell responses in second ranked mice were dependent on the ability of synaptic communication in the brain. The brain circuits that control the position in the social hierarchy are beginning to em

Although fear is known to serve essential purposes in protecting individuals from dangerous situations and threats, dysfunction of fear response can lead to neuropsychiatric disorders – such as pathological anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. The understanding of the neuropathophysiology of those disorders is still limited, and therapeutic options (psychotherapy or medication) remain in some cases ineffective. Works investigating the function of neuronal networks helped highlight the implication of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in fear response. Moreover studies on mice hav