Title Page
Contents
ABSTRACT 8
1. Introduction 10
1.1. Emotion and valence 10
1.2. Simple and complex emotions 13
2. Materials and methods 15
2.1. Animals 15
2.2. Stereotaxic Surgeries 15
2.3. Behavioral Assays 15
2.3.1. Ambivalent exposure 15
2.3.2. Preference test 16
2.3.3. Analysis of preference ratio 16
2.4. Fiber photometry 16
2.5. Posture estimation 17
2.6. Perfusion and cryosection 17
2.7. Imaging and analysis 17
2.8. Statistical analysis 17
3. Results 19
3.1. Establishment of intensity of ambivalent stimulation 19
3.2. Parameter optimization of DeepLabCut: a deep learning-based posture estimation package 24
3.3. Measurement of Ca²⁺ activity in the mPFC 26
4. Discussions 35
4.1. Complex emotion in humans 35
4.2. Complex emotion in mice 36
4.3. Future research directions 38
References 39
Abstract (in Korean) 43
Table 1. Different conditions of positive and negative stimulus combinations. 22
Figure 1. Different patterns of preference upon various combinations of stimuli. 21
Figure 2. Divergent pattern of preference after exposure to ambivalent stimulus 23
Figure 3. Tracking coordinates of mouse body parts 25
Figure 4. Representative images of viral expressions and z-scored cortical activity 28
Figure 5. Peri-event activities of the mPFC upon crossing chambers 29
Figure 6. Ambivalent chamber-specific activation of mPFC 30
Figure 7. Negative correlation emerges after the exposure to ambivalent stimuli 31
Figure 8. Trajectory of mice and corresponding cortical activities in the coordinates 32
Figure 9. Correlation between preference ratio and its total distance 33
Figure 10. mPFC activity difference in the control group was not observed. 34