Topic: emotion states

Emotions are conserved functional states influenced by both external stimuli and internal bodily signals. One key brain region implicated in the encoding of emotions and processing of bodily signals across species is the posterior insular cortex (pInsCtx). Recent work in mice has shown that optogenetically elevating heart-rate increases the activity of individual pInsCtx neurons as well as induces anxiety. Additionally, perturbing heart-to-brain communication using vagus nerve stimulation impedes fear extinction in a pInsCtx-dependent manner. However, we currently lack a mechanistic understa