Topic: social motivation

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) emerges in the aftermath of a traumatic event, underscoring the pressing need for research into preventive treatments. Adrenal glucocorticoids induce short-term physiological adaptations necessary to cope with the threat. Evidence indicates that when administrated after trauma, glucocorticoids prevent the development of PTSD. The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is a key structure for processing positive and negative valence which communicates bidirectionally with other regions to regulate the stress responses. The present study evaluates the efficacy of cortico

Interactions between conspecifics trigger the release of dopamine (DA), primarily from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) into the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc), promoting pleasure and positive reinforcement. Disruptions in DA levels can impact social motivation, potentially decreasing responsiveness to social reward and increasing the risk for social anxiety disorder.Using the social fear conditioning (SFC) paradigm, we investigated how DA regulates social motivation and its role in processing social fear. Our approach combined behavioural pharmacology and molecular techniques focusing on the VTA and

Dysregulation of social motivation can lead to social maladjustment, relationship degradation, and is common in many neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism or depression. It is thus very important to better understand the neurobiological substrate underlying this dysregulation of motivation. The Subthalamic Nucleus (STN) has been shown to be a crucial brain region to regulate motivation and emotions. STN lesions induce impairments in various aspects of social behavior in rats, including reduced motivation for rewarding positive ultrasonic vocalizations (USV), non-recognition of emotional vo

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) are implicated in various aspects of social behavior such as initiating, maintaining, or avoiding social interaction. C57BL/6J mice, CD1 mice and Sprague Dawley (SD) rats are amongst the most commonly used animal models for studying these behaviors. It was previously established that these strains of mice and rats differ in their social motivation during interaction with a sex-matched conspecific. We aim to find neural correlates to these differences using chronically implanted multi-electrode arrays targeting various nuclei of PFC and NA