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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Aug 16.
Published in final edited form as: Neuron. 2017 Aug 16;95(4):757–778. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.06.014

Figure 12. A neural pathway illustrating hunger-dependent processing of food-cue sensory processing.

Figure 12

Many studies in humans and rodents implicate the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and insular cortex (InsCtx) in assessing the valence and salience of learned food cues, and addressing the question of expected interoceptive value: how will eating this food make me feel, now and later? If the answer is net positive, then motor circuits are recruited by BLA and InsCtx. This answer is dependent on hunger state (and therefore on tonic input from AgRP neurons, in part via paraventricular thalamus, PVT), and on the salience of learned food cue inputs to BLA (from thalamus and association cortex). The estimation of interoceptive consequences of food consumption in InsCtx is likely shaped by previous experience involving visceral and gustatory input. LP: lateral posterior nucleus of the thalamus. POR: postrhinal cortex. VPL: ventral posterolateral thalamus. VPM: ventral posteromedial thalamus. PBN: parabrachial nucleus. NTS: nucleus of the solitary tract. NAc: nucleus accumbens (Livneh et al., 2017).