How human prefrontal and insular regions interact while maximizing rewards and minimizing punishments is unknown. Capitalizing on human intracranial recordings, we demonstrate that the functional specificity toward reward or punishment learning is better disentangled by interactions compared to local representations. Prefrontal and insular cortices display non-selective neural populations to rewards and punishments. Non-selective responses, however, give rise to context-specific interareal interactions. We identify a reward subsystem with redundant interactions between the orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, with a driving role of the latter. In addition, we find a punishment subsystem with redundant interactions between the insular and dorsolateral cortices, with a driving role of the insula. Finally, switching between reward and punishment learning is mediated by synergistic interactions between the two subsystems. These results provide a unifying explanation of distributed cortical representations and interactions supporting reward and punishment learning.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by motor impairments caused by degeneration of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta. In addition to these symptoms, PD patients often suffer from non-motor comorbidities including sleep and psychiatric disturbances, which are thought to depend on concomitant alterations of serotonergic and noradrenergic transmission. A primary locus of serotonergic neurons is the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN), providing brain-wide serotonergic input. Here, we identified electrophysiological and morphological parameters to classify serotonergic and dopaminergic neurons in the murine DRN under control conditions and in a PD model, following striatal injection of the catecholamine toxin, 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA). Electrical and morphological properties of both neuronal populations were altered by 6-OHDA. In serotonergic neurons, most changes were reversed when 6-OHDA was injected in combination with desipramine, a noradrenaline (NA) reuptake inhibitor, protecting the noradrenergic terminals. Our results show that the depletion of both NA and dopamine in the 6-OHDA mouse model causes changes in the DRN neural circuitry.