Preferential neuronal responses to snakes in the monkey medial prefrontal cortex support an evolutionary origin for ophidiophobia

Dinh HT, Nishimaru H, Le QV, Matsumoto J, Setogawa T, Maior RS, Tomaz C, Ono T, Nishijo H (2021) Preferential neuronal responses to snakes in the monkey medial prefrontal cortex support an evolutionary origin for ophidiophobia. Front Behav Neurosci 15:653250. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2021.653250

Summary: Ophidiophobia (snake phobia) is one of the most common specific phobias. Noninvasive imaging studies of patients with specific phobia reported that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), especially the rostral part of the anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), and amygdala are activated during the presentation of phobogenic stimuli. Attentional bias to specific animals promotes anxiety and phobia. The mPFC is reported to be involved in attentional allocation to various salient visual stimuli. The findings suggest that the rACC focuses attention on snakes, and promotes aversive conditioning to snakes, which may lead to anxiety and ophidiophobia.

Usage: Prior work has demonstrated that lesions of the cortical cholinergic system of the basal forebrain impair performance in attentional tasks. 192-IgG-SAP (50 or 100 ng) was infused into the PFC of rats.

See: Dalley JW et al. Cortical cholinergic function and deficits in visual attentional performance in rats following 192 IgG-Saporin-induced lesions of the medial prefrontal cortex. Cereb Cortex 14(8):922-932, 2004.

Related Products: 192-IgG-SAP (Cat. #IT-01)