Central infusion of prostaglandin E2 reveals a unified representation of sickness in the mouse insular cortex.

Prostaglandin E2 infusion in mice activates the insular cortex to encode a comprehensive sickness state more effectively than primary somatosensory cortex.

• Why it matters: Understanding how the neocortex contributes to sickness symptoms can reveal new insights into brain-immune interactions and potentially inform treatments for illness-related behavioral changes.
• What they did: Researchers administered intracerebroventricular PGE2 to awake mice and used Fos mapping and electrophysiological recordings to analyze neural activity in the insular and somatosensory cortices, focusing on sickness-related encoding.
• The result: The insular cortex showed superior decoding of multidimensional sickness measures compared to individual traits, suggesting it plays a key role in representing the integrated physiological and behavioral sickness response.