Masaharu Yasuda Department of Physiology, Kansai Medical University

Many studies regarding neuronal circuit for emotional processing have done on the basis of the conceptual framework where the emotional reaction, behaviorally and autonomically, caused as a response to sensory events. Such emotional reaction causes the change of bodily sense, interoception. The recent studies in the past decades have suggested that the afferent input of interoceptive signal may influence on the neuronal processing for emotion. However, the detailed mechanism is still elusive. In this study, we investigate the emotional representation of the neurons which receive interoceptive signals and the effect of the modulation of interceptive input on emotion-related behavior, by stimulating vagus nerve, which is one of the main pathways of visceral afferent signals.