Conserved brain-wide emergence of emotional response from sensory experience in humans and mice.

Summary

A cross-species intracranial electrophysiology-behavior-medication screen identified conserved fast broadcast followed by persistent neural dynamics as the substrate of emotional responses. Pharmacologic interventions that selectively suppress persistent dynamics reduce emotional responses while sparing rapid sensory broadcast.

Key Findings

• Emotion-related sensory signals show a conserved biphasic pattern: rapid brain-wide broadcast followed by persistent neural activity.
• Medication interventions that selectively block persistent dynamics suppress emotional responses in both humans and mice.
• Emotion emerges as a distributed neural context shaped by a global intrinsic timescale.

Clinical Implications

Understanding that persistent neural dynamics drive emotional responses suggests perioperative strategies to modulate affect (e.g., anxiolysis, emergence agitation) by using agents that target persistent dynamics while preserving sensory processing.

Limitations

• Not a randomized clinical outcomes trial; generalizability to patient subpopulations and clinical endpoints remains untested
• Sample size and detailed cohort descriptors are not provided in the abstract

Future Directions

Identify drug classes that specifically modulate persistent dynamics, test perioperative applications (e.g., premedication to attenuate stress responses), and map interactions with anesthetic states.