Event

<p>The brain can form associations between sensory information of inner and/or outer world (e.g. Pavlovian conditioning) but also between sensory information and the immune system. The phenomenon which was described in the last century is termed conditioned immune response (CIR) but very little is known about neuronal mechanisms subserving it.&nbsp; The conditioned stimulus can be a given taste and the unconditioned stimulus is an agent that induces or reduces a specific immune response.&nbsp; Over the last years, we and others revealed molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying taste valance representation in the anterior insular cortex (aIC). Recently, a circuit in the posterior insular cortex (pIC) encoding the internal representation of a given immune response was identified. Together, it allowed us to hypothesize and prove that the internal reciprocal connections between the anterior and posterior insula encode CIR.&nbsp; One can look at CIR as a noon declarative form of Nocebo effect and thus we demonstrate for the first time a detailed circuit mechanism for Placebo/Nocebo effect in the cortex.</p>