An insular view of the social decision-making network
Graphical abstract
Insular cortex is anatomically positioned to integrate and convey socioemotional cues from the external environment to the social decision-making network, which generates flexible and context-appropriate social behavioral responses.
Section snippets
Social decision making
It is nearly impossible to overstate the importance of sociality for the survival and success of many species (Wilson, 1992). Social behaviors are tightly interwoven with emotion, and communicating one’s emotional state may evoke adaptive behavioral responses from other group members. Animals detect, appraise and respond to others’ emotional states with flexible and context-appropriate behaviors though a process called social decision-making. This capacity gives rise to fundamental social
The social brain network
A network model of brain structures that are able to execute elementary social behaviors in rodents was first introduced in the Social Brain Network (SBN; Newman, 1999). This system includes the LS, mPOA, AH, VMH, PAG, VTA, MeA and BNST (See Fig. 1 caption for list of abbreviations). Homologous networks exist in in birds, bony fish (Goodson, 2005) and reptiles (Crews, 2003). SBN nodes were included in the network model if they were reciprocally connected with the other regions, contained
Odor and piriform cortex
Odor communication is vital for rodent social behaviors (Johnston, 2003) and olfactory cues and chemosignals communicate one’s, species, sex, and reproductive state, social status, sickness, and familiarity (Arakawa et al., 2008; Liberles, 2014). Exposure to specific odors elicits myriad social behaviors in rodents, such as mating (Coria-Avila et al., 2005; Sakuma, 2008), aggression (Stowers et al., 2013), social learning (Choe et al., 2015), maternal behavior (Fleming and Rosenblatt, 1974),
The insular cortex integrates external sensory stimuli
The IC is a well-documented site of multisensory processing (Rodgers et al., 2008; Gogolla et al., 2014) and is reciprocally connected with thalamocortical structures (Craig, 2009; Guldin and Markowitsch, 1983), which suggest IC is positioned to integrate sensory information with emotional and motivational states (Damasio and Carvalho, 2013; Krushel and van der Kooy, 1988; Paulus and Stein, 2006). Unimodal visual, sensory, auditory, gustatory and nociceptive inputs first converge in posterior
Conclusion
Across species, social decision-making allows for navigating the social world with behavioral flexibility. Behavioral reactions in a social situation reflect the convergence of social information, external stimuli and physiological state to produce appropriate responses. Multimodal sensory integration and convergence allow socioemotional cues to be bound with relevant external cues and internal states. We argue this function is uniquely attributed to IC, which is anatomically positioned to
Conflicts of interest
The authors have no competing financial conflicts of interest to declare.
Acknowledgements
M.M.R-C is funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. J.P.C is funded by National Institutes of Mental Health Grants MH109545 and MH110907.
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