Cardiogenic control of affective behavioural state

Abstract Emotional states influence bodily physiology, as exemplified in the top-down process by which anxiety causes faster beating of the heart 1–3 . However, whether an increased heart rate might itself induce anxiety or fear responses is unclear 3–8 . Physiological theories of emotion, proposed over a century ago, have considered that in general, there could be an important and even dominant flow of information from the body to the brain 9 . Here, to formally test this idea, we developed a noninvasive optogenetic pacemaker for precise, cell-type-specific control of cardiac rhythms of up to 900 beats per minute in freely moving mice, enabled by a wearable micro-LED harness and the systemic viral delivery of…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• NA
  National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression
• NI
  National Institutes of Health