The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) has been implicated in a broad range of cognitive and emotional functions, including the processing of negative emotion. Furthermore, abnormalities in dACC activity have been associated with anxiety and depression, disorders in which negative emotion is dysregulated. Thus, a better understanding of the precise contributions of the dACC to negative emotion could give us important insights into the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these debilitating neuropsychiatric disorders. However, despite extensive study of the dACC, its precise role in negative emotion is unclear. Instead there is mounting evidence that rather than being one functionally homogeneous region, subregions of the dACC may have distinct functional roles. This evidence is largely correlational, and interventional studies in experimental animals are required to address this. Accordingly, the work in this thesis causally assessed the contributions of two spatially distinct subregions of the dACC (rostral and caudal) to the regulation of the behavioural and cardiovascular correlates of negative emotion in the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus). These dACC subregions were targeted with indwelling cannulae to enable pharmacological manipulations to be carried out in a range of tasks, used to assess distinct components of negative emotion, such as conditioned fear and anxiety. The findings suggest that the rostral dACC and the caudal dACC do indeed have distinct contributions to the expression of negative emotion and the regulation of anxiety, respectively. Furthermore, an assessment of the anterograde projections of these subregions provides anatomical support for the observed functional differences.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:753352 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Rahman, Sufia Saburan |
| Contributors | Roberts, Angela |
| Publisher | University of Cambridge |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/277913 |
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