Insular input to the prelimbic cortex underlies social affective behavior in rats.

ABSTRACT: To navigate social interactions, animals must adjust their behavior in response to information derived from conspecifics. The integration of social information and coordination of behavior occurs within a distributed social decision making network. The prelimbic (PL) prefrontal cortex and the insula (IC) are key nodes in the salience network which is anatomically situated to interact with the social brain. We investigated the IC-PL circuit in a social affective preference (SAP) test in which subject rats are exposed to 2 age-matched conspecifics where one is stressed via footshock and the other is naive to stress. Typically, rats approach stressed juvenile conspecifics but avoid stressed adults. Using a combination of local and tract specific loss of function methods, we demonstrate that t

SUBMITTER: Chun EK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12621744 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature