Conserved brain-wide emergence of emotional response from sensory experience in humans and mice
Emotional responses to sensory experience are central to the human condition in health and disease. We hypothesized that principles governing the emergence of emotion from sensation might be discoverable through their conservation across the mammalian lineage. We therefore designed a cross-species neural activity screen, applicable to humans and mice, combining precise affective behavioral measurements, clinical medication administration, and brain-wide intracranial electrophysiology. This screen revealed conserved biphasic dynamics in which emotionally salient sensory signals are swiftly broadcast throughout the brain and followed by a characteristic persistent activity pattern. Medication-based interventions that selectively blocked persistent dynamics while preserving fast broadcast selectively inhibited emotional responses in humans and mice. Mammalian emotion appears to emerge as a specifically distributed neural context, driven by persistent dynamics and shaped by a global intrinsic timescale.
Authors
- Jaimie M. Henderson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3276-2267)
- Leili Mortazavi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9838-4935)
- Karl Deisseroth (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9440-3967)
- Sam Vesuna
- Cephra Raja (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1758-1246)
- Adam Fogarty
- Liqun Luo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5467-9264)
- Jacob Brawer
- Eun Young Choi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3226-1486)
- Ethan B. Richman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8471-266X)
- Carolyn I. Rodríguez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6697-1692)
- Paul Nuyujukian (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7778-5473)
- Adelaida Chibukhchyan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1470-8347)
- Zoe Lusk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4728-2688)
- Chelsea Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9464-7002)
- Tony X. Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9334-8492)
- Peter van Roessel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9477-604X)
- Laura M. Hack (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2647-4293)
- Anish Mitra (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3362-2274)
- Pavithra Mukunda (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1020-2650)
- Logan Grosenick (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3216-0319)
- Jennifer A. McNab (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1763-0792)
- Gustavo Chau (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3153-3868)
- Vivek Buch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1151-6128)
- Ethan A. Solomon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0541-7588)
- Boris D. Heifets (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1474-0379)
- Isaac Kauvar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1336-0721)
- Leanne M. Williams (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9987-7360)
- Lisa Yamada
- Xue Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4279-899X)
- Dian Lyu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9363-7670)
- Dariana Gil-Hernández
- Kishandra Patron
- Shenandoah Wrobel
Institutions
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US)
- VA Palo Alto Health Care System (US)
- Cornell University (US)
- Stanford Medicine (US)
- Weill Cornell Medicine (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science
- Published
- 2025-05-29
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adt3971
- Citations
- 16
- Primary Topic
- Neural dynamics and brain function
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 22.90