Social play behavior is a rewarding behavior predominantly displayed by juveniles of various mammalian species, including humans and rats. Although the mesolimbic reward system is involved in the regulation of social play, how brain regions in this system interact to regulate social play behavior is unknown. Here, we determined the involvement of the ventral pallidum (VP) as well as inputs from the nucleus accumbens (NAc) to t...

Chronic loneliness predicts mood disturbances and onset of major depressive disorder. However, little research has examined the neural correlates of individual difference in susceptibility to perceiving loneliness. In addition, the role of cerebellum, which is heavily implicated in social, cognitive and affective processes, in loneliness is unclear. We studied 99 healthy individuals divided into susceptible, concordant and rob...