LIN Seminar: “Delineating the insula-centric negative affective circuitry engaged by stress and alcohol exposure” by Sam Centanni (Wake Forest University)

Please join us on March 30th at 4pm in SELE 4289 for a LIN Seminar featuring "Delineating the insula-centric negative affective circuitry engaged by stress and alcohol exposure" by Dr. Sam Centanni (Wake Forest University)

Centanni Lab

Host: Dennis Sparta

Abstract: Stress and negative affective states can serve as potent triggers in all phases of drug addiction -initial use, maintenance, and in abstinence. Despite the highly prevalent correlation between negative affect and alcohol use disorder, the underlying brain circuits governing this relationship are poorly understood. We previously showed that a mid-insular to BNST circuit drives negative affective behavior associated with alcohol abstinence. To achieve our goal of delineating the complex abstinence network, we first need a better understanding of the fundamental circuitry governing stress on acute level. Restraint is a widely used stress model that induces a strong response in the BNST. We showed that insula-BNST pathway is recruited during active struggling behavior, and that this activity is closely paralleled by enhanced extracellular glutamatergic and decreased GABAergic signaling. How does information regarding physical activity reach stress circuitry? Our work, in which active struggle events are tightly correlated with insula-BNST activity, suggests surveillance circuitry mechanisms exist where CNS pathways provide feedforward motor information. This talk will discuss recent circuit-mapping studies using light sheet microscopy and in vivo fiber photometry to isolate and characterize an upstream motor cortex projection onto insula-BNST cells that is engaged shortly before struggle event onset. This motor cortical pathway provides unique feed forward motor planning/execution information to affective circuits. My talk will conclude by discussing recent studies that use a similar strategy to examine how the stress-sensitive insula-BNST circuit could serve as a potential circuit biomarker for ethanol drinking behavior and abstinence-induced negative affect.