James L. McGaugh Distinguished Seminar Series

Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at 11:00am

The seminar will be In-Person.

Katalin Gothard, MD, Ph.D.

Professor of Physiology, Neurology, and Neuroscience

“A context-dependent switch from sensing to feeling in the primate amygdala”

Abstract:

Tactile signals elicited in the periphery by social and affective touch acquire emotional significance in the brain. As the amygdala processes the valence of all sensory stimuli, we predicted that the positive valence of grooming would strongly activate the monkey amygdala. To test this hypothesis, we compared neural activity in the amygdala and the primary somatosensory cortex in response to social grooming and gentle airflow delivered to the same areas of the skin. Neurons in the somatosensory cortex responded to both types of tactile stimuli. In the amygdala, however, neurons did not respond to individual grooming sweeps even though grooming elicited autonomic states indicative of positive affect. Instead of responses to individual touch stimuli, a large proportion of neurons showed enhanced or suppressed baseline firing rates that persisted throughout a grooming bout. These changes were attributed to social context because the presence of the groomer alone could account for increases or decreases in baseline firing rates. It appears, therefore, that during grooming, the amygdala stops responding to external inputs on a short time scale but remains responsive to social context, and the associated affective states, on longer time scales.

About:

Dr. Gothard is a Professor in the departments of Physiology and Neuroscience. The broad goal of our research is to understand the neural basis of emotion and social behavior. We work with rhesus monkeys because they share with humans social behaviors and the hierarchical organization of the societies. We place emphasis on exploring brain activity during natural or seminatural behaviors. For example, we monitor neural activity in the amygdala and in the somatosensory cortex while the monkeys receive social grooming and non-social tactile stimuli. Joint monitoring neural activity and autonomic reveal the real-time dynamic interactions between brain areas involved in social perception, decision-making, and the control of overt social behaviors. LEARN MORE