Halassa Lab

Project 3

Top-down regulation of emotional processing:

The ability to regulate internal states is critical for emotional wellbeing. The prefrontal cortex is known to engage in this function, but the precise circuit details are incompletely understood. In this series of studies, we are using a number of tasks that probe the responsiveness of the amygdala complex to emotional stimuli. Our data suggest that the context-dependent regulation of these responses is controlled by prefrontal-to-amygdala responses. Surprisingly, bidirectional control of these context-dependent prefrontal activity patterns is regulated by cell-types specific mediodorsal inputs. Overall, this work may illustrate general principles for thalamic regulation of prefrontal executive control that extend to emotional regulation.