Project description DEENESFRITPL Targeting the insula to treat depression Addiction and depression are psychiatric disorders characterised by suboptimal decision-making due to aberrant processing of negative information. Laboratory tasks to assess decision-making in humans closely mimic real-life situations, providing participants with cues to guide their decisions, which can, for instance, result in winning or losing money. The EU-funded Island in the brain project will study the engagement of the insular cortex (insula) brain region in decision-making. The insular cortex has been implicated in decision-making and in several psychiatric disorders. It will also develop a new way to assess cue-guided risk/punishment decision-making in rats. The findings will be useful in the testing of treatment strategies targeting the insula. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective Psychiatric disorders such as addiction, depression and anxiety disorder are characterized by suboptimal decision making (DM) due to aberrant processing of negative information. However, it remains unclear which brain processes underlie suboptimal DM. One candidate brain region involved is the insular cortex (insula), which has been implicated in DM and in several psychiatric disorders. Laboratory tasks to assess DM in humans closely mimic real-life situations, providing participants with cues to guide their decisions, which can lead to winning or losing money, much like weighting information about risks and benefits when choosing between investing in stocks or bonds. However, the technology available to study the human brain is limited, whereas experiments with rodents allow for a detailed and fine-grained understanding of brain function. Importantly, in order to translate results between rodents and humans, the tasks used to assess behaviour need to be comparable, but there are currently no tasks in rodents to study cue-guided DM in the face of punishment. During the fellowship, I will study the involvement of the insula in DM when using cues to inform rats about potential punishments and benefits. To achieve this, I will: 1) Develop a novel behavioural task to assess “cue-guided risk/punishment decision making” in rats. 2) Assess the contribution of the insula by perturbing neural signalling in this brain region, and the network it is embedded in. The novel task has tremendous translational value in that it parallels tasks used in human populations and mimics real-life decisions. Therefore, the results of the project are relevant for testing the efficacy of treatment strategies targeted at the insula to alleviate psychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorders and addiction. Fields of science medical and health sciencesclinical medicinepsychiatryanxiety disorders Keywords Risk Reward Punishment Cues Decision making Prefrontal cortex Insular cortex Striatum Nucleus Accumbens Gambling Addiction Rats Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2019 - Individual Fellowships Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2019 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF) Coordinator UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT Net EU contribution € 187 572,48 Address Heidelberglaan 8 3584 CS Utrecht Netherlands See on map Region West-Nederland Utrecht Utrecht Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00
