A role for primate subgenual cingulate cortex in sustaining autonomic arousal.

ABSTRACT: The subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (subgenual ACC) plays an important role in regulating emotion, and degeneration in this area correlates with depressed mood and anhedonia. Despite this understanding, it remains unknown how this part of the prefrontal cortex causally contributes to emotion, especially positive emotions. Using Pavlovian conditioning procedures in macaque monkeys, we examined the contribution of the subgenual ACC to autonomic arousal associated with positive emotional events. After such conditioning, autonomic arousal increases in response to cues that predict rewards, and monkeys maintain this heightened state of arousal during an interval before reward delivery. Here we show that although monkeys with lesions of the subgenual ACC show the initial, cue-evoked arousal,

SUBMITTER: Rudebeck PH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3986148 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature