A distributed subcortical circuit linked to instrumental information-seeking about threat

What is it about?

Everyday life requires balancing between focusing on potential dangers and pursuing rewards. Using brain imaging, researchers found that tracking of threat and switching to vigilance were associated with patterns of brain activity spanning habenula, dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN), anterior cingulate cortex, and anterior insula cortex.

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Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This study a) records activity in the human dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN); b) links it to a specific aspect of behavior; and c) sets out an account of how the activity arises through interactions across a distributed neural circuit (critically comprising habenula and insula). The behavior we investigate is quotidian and intuitively understandable but has received little scholarly attention, and the behavior we link to DRN is the same as one that we have shown in large-scale studies to be strongly and robustly related to individual variation in anxiety.