Scientific lectures: Brain mechanisms for emotional states

Animal behavior is dictated by internal variables, such as the needto feed, drink, survive or reproduce. Together with external stimuliand past experiences, these variables define an animal’s state, oremotional state, that determines a repertoire of appropriatebehaviors given the specific circumstances. Although it isunderstood that the emotional state of an animal is a function of theongoing brain network configuration, it remains largely unknownhow the corresponding brain-wide configurations are generated andhow they define emotional states and behavior. In my talk, I willdiscuss the general neurobiological principles underlying thegeneration of emotional states across different behavioralparadigms by focusing on the mouse amygdala. I will presentrecent experiments longitudinally imaging neural calcium dynamicsacross different environments in freely moving mice engaged inexploratory or learned instrumental behaviors demonstrating thatchanges in the activity of major, non-overlapping populations ofamygdala principal neurons predict switches between behavioralstates and that these state signals are tightly correlated with ananimal’s learned expectations.

Hosted by Nikolas KARALIS.

If you would like to meet the speaker, please contact us.

Conference location

Please join the conference in Paris Brain Institute auditorium.