Biology subjects

Dupin, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Dupin, M..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Multi-task Intracranial EEG recordings reveal a Comprehensive Role of the Human Dorsal Anterior Insula in High-Level Cognition

The dorsal anterior insula (dAI) is widely recognized as a cornerstone of human cognition. However, its functional characterization remains the subject of considerable debate and competing theories. Embracing a "shift in viewpoint" approach--defining a brain regions function through the observation of the same neural population across diverse experimental contexts--this study used intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings from a large cohort of patients to investigate the sub-second neural response dynamics of the human dAI across a broad range of cognitive tasks, spanning visual category discrimination, phonological and semantic processing, attentive visual search, and verbal and visuospatial working memory. This within-subject, multi-task iEEG framework offered a robust basis for decoding the structure-function relationship of the dAI and for empirically testing key predictions of prevailing theoretical models concerning its role. Our findings confirmed the dAIs involvement in the Action-Mode Network and shed new light on the large-scale spatiotemporal organization of that network, while providing novel insights into the interplay between cognitive effort and efficiency.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

The Inferior Frontal Sulcus, not the Anterior Insula, acts as a late-stage attentional gate for the fast rejection of salient but irrelevant sensory inputs during cognitive tasks

The ability to prioritize behaviorally relevant stimuli is essential for efficient cognition, particularly in distracting environments. The anterior insula (AI), a key node of the salience network, has been proposed to support this selection process by detecting salient events. A similar function, however, has also been attributed to the inferior frontal sulcus (IFS), located at the intersection of the ventral and dorsal attention networks. Here, we directly compared the respective contributions of these regions to attentional gatekeeping--the identification and rejection of attention-grabbing yet task-irrelevant "false positives" to preserve cognitive resources. We recorded intracranial EEG from 63 patients performing an attentive reading task designed to dissociate salience from task relevance. High-Frequency Activity (HFA) responses between 50 Hz and 150 Hz revealed that the IFS was the only region--across an extensive sampling of the frontal and insular cortices--to exhibit consistent, subsecond response dynamics compatible with the filtering of false positives. In contrast, the AI did not participate in the analysis or rejection of distractors and showed only sparse, delayed responses to targets, suggesting a role in coordinating or energizing downstream cognitive or motor processes rather than in salience detection per se. These findings indicate that the IFS--rather than the AI--is the primary late-stage node for attentional gatekeeping during cognitive tasks performed under distracting conditions.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Amplitude modulation pattern of rat distress vocalisations during fear conditioning

In humans, screams have strong amplitude modulations (AM) at 30 to 150 Hz. These AM correspond to the acoustic correlate of perceptual roughness. In bats, distress calls can carry AMs, which elicit heart rate increases in playback experiments. Whether amplitude modulation occurs in fearful vocalisations of other animal species beyond humans and bats remains unknown. Here we analysed the AM pattern of rats 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalisations emitted in a fear conditioning task. We found that the number of vocalisations decreases during the presentation of conditioned stimuli. We also observed that AMs do occur in rat 22-kHz vocalisations. AMs are stronger during the presentation of conditioned stimuli, and during escape behaviour compared to freezing. Our results suggest that the presence of AMs in vocalisations emitted could reflect the animals internal state of fear related to avoidance behaviour.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2020

Respiration and brain neural dynamics associated with interval timing during odor fear learning in rats

In fear conditioning, where a conditioned stimulus predicts the arrival of an aversive stimulus, the animal encodes the time interval between the two stimuli. Freezing, the most used index to assess learned fear, lacks the temporal resolution required to investigate interval timing at the early stages of learning. Here we monitored respiration to visualize anticipatory behavioral responses in an odor fear conditioning in rats, while recording theta (5-15Hz) and gamma (40-80Hz) brain oscillatory activities in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), basolateral amygdala (BLA), dorsomedial striatum (DMS) and olfactory piriform cortex (PIR). We investigated the temporal patterns of respiration frequency and of theta and gamma activity power during the odor-shock interval. We found that akin to respiration patterns, theta temporal curves were modulated by the duration of the odor-shock interval in the four recording sites, and respected scalar property in mPFC and DMS. In contrast, gamma temporal curves were modulated by the interval duration only in the mPFC, and in a manner that did not respect scalar property. This suggests a preferential role for theta rhythm in interval timing. In addition, our data bring the novel idea that the respiratory rhythm might take part in the setting of theta activity dynamics.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

New insights from 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations to characterize fear responses: relationship with respiration and brain oscillatory dynamics

Fear behavior depends on interactions between the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the basolateral amygdala (BLA), and the expression of fear involves synchronized activity in theta and gamma oscillatory activities. In addition, freezing, the most classical measure of fear response in rodents, temporally coincides with the development of sustained 4-Hz oscillations in prefrontal- amygdala circuits. Interestingly, these oscillations were recently shown to depend on the animals respiratory rhythm, supporting the growing body of evidence pinpointing the influence of nasal breathing on brain rhythms. During fearful states, rats also emit 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) which drastically affect respiratory rhythm. However, the relationship between 22-kHz USV, respiration and brain oscillatory activities is still unknown. Yet such information is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of how the different components of fear response collectively modulate rats brain neural dynamics. Here we trained male rats in an odor fear conditioning task, while recording simultaneously local field potentials in BLA, mPFC and olfactory piriform cortex, together with USV calls and respiration. We show that USV calls coincide with an increase in delta and gamma power and a decrease in theta power. In addition, during USV emission in contrast to silent freezing, there is no coupling between respiratory rate and delta frequency, and the modulation of fast oscillations amplitude relative to the phase of respiration is modified. We propose that sequences of USV calls could result in a differential gating of information within the network of structures sustaining fear behavior, thus potentially modulating fear expression/memory.\n\nSignificance StatementWhile freezing is the most frequently used measure of fear, it is only one amongst the different components of rodents response to threatening events. USV is another index that gives additional insight into the socioemotional status of an individual. Our study is the first to describe the effects of USV production on rats brain oscillatory activities in the fear neural network, and to relate some of them to changes in nasal breathing. A better knowledge of the impact of USV calls on brain neural dynamics is not only important for understanding the respective weight of the different components of fear response, but is also particularly relevant for rodent models of human neuropsychiatric disorders, for which socio-affective communication is severely impaired.

neuroscience↗