Insula articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The existence of a common substrate for emotional valence and anxiety remained elusive. Here we show that excitatory neurons of the anterior insular cortex (aIC), including neurons projecting to the basolateral amygdala (aIC-BLA) encode both states.

    • C. Nicolas
    • , A. Ju
    •  & A. Beyeler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animals may approach normally aversive stimuli such as an air puff when in a non-enriched environment. Here the authors show that dopamine release in the ventral lateral striatum was reduced by aversive stimulation, but was increased when it was actively sought.

    • Yosuke Yawata
    • , Yu Shikano
    •  & Yuji Ikegaya

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fluctuations in mood are known to affect our decisions. Here the authors propose and validate a model of how mood fluctuations arise through a slow integration of positive and negative feedback and report the resulting key changes in brain activity that modulate our decision making.

    • Fabien Vinckier
    • , Lionel Rigoux
    •  & Mathias Pessiglione

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In contrast to predictions from learning theory, humans learn to seek rewards and avoid punishments equally well. Here the authors offer an elegant solution to this problem by demonstrating that humans learn option values relative to a reference point subserved by a common neural substrate.

    • Stefano Palminteri
    • , Mehdi Khamassi
    •  & Giorgio Coricelli

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