Descrizione del progetto
Rivolgere l’attenzione sull’insula per trattare la depressione
La dipendenza e la depressione sono disturbi psichiatrici caratterizzati da un processo decisionale non ottimale causato da un’elaborazione di informazioni negative aberrante. I test di laboratorio volti a valutare il processo decisionale negli esseri umani simulano fedelmente le situazioni reali fornendo ai partecipanti indizi per guidare le loro decisioni, che possono, ad esempio, determinare la vincita o la perdita di denaro. Il progetto Island in the brain, finanziato dall’UE, studierà il coinvolgimento della regione cerebrale della corteccia insulare (insula) nel processo decisionale, un’area che studi precedenti hanno correlato al processo decisionale e a diversi disturbi psichiatrici. Il progetto svilupperà inoltre un nuovo modo di valutare il processo decisionale guidato da indizi e basato sul rischio di subire una punizione nei ratti. I risultati saranno utili per testare strategie di trattamento incentrate sull’insula.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinatore
3584 CS Utrecht
Paesi Bassi