title: Central role for the insular cortex in mediating conditioned responses to anticipatory cues.
abstract: Reward-related circuits are fundamental for initiating feeding on the basis of food-predicting cues, whereas gustatory circuits are believed to be involved in the evaluation of food during consumption. However, accumulating evidence challenges such a rigid separation. The insular cortex (IC), an area largely studied in rodents for its role in taste processing, is involved in representing anticipatory cues. Although IC responses to anticipatory cues are well established, the role of IC cue-related activity in mediating feeding behaviors is poorly understood. Here, we examined the involvement of the IC in the expression of cue-triggered food approach in mice trained with a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm. We observed a significant change in neuronal firing during presentation of the cue. Pharmacological silencing of the IC inhibited food port approach. Such a behavior could be recapitulated by temporally selective inactivation during the cue. These findings represent the first evidence, to our knowledge, that cue-evoked neuronal activity in the mouse IC modulates behavioral output, and demonstrate a causal link between cue responses and feeding behaviors.
authors.affiliation: Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore, MD 21224;
authors.forename: Ikue
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kusumoto-Yoshida
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology and Behavior and Graduate Program in Neuroscience, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794; and.
authors.forename: Haixin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore, MD 21224;
authors.forename: Billy T
authors.initials: BT
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology and Behavior and Graduate Program in Neuroscience, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794; and alfredo.fontanini@stonybrook.edu antonello.bonci@nih.gov.
authors.forename: Alfredo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fontanini
authors.affiliation: Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore, MD 21224; Solomon H. Snyder Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205 alfredo.fontanini@stonybrook.edu antonello.bonci@nih.gov.
authors.forename: Antonello
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bonci
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice
keywords: anticipation; cue; insular cortex; learning; reward