Functional identification of an aggression locus in the mouse hypothalamus

By Dayu Lin, Maureen P. Boyle, Piotr Doll'ar, Hyosang Lee, Pietro Perona, E. Lein, David J. Anderson. Nature, 2011

848 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Electrical stimulation of certain hypothalamic regions in cats and rodents can elicit attack behaviour, but the exact location of relevant cells within these regions, their requirement for naturally occurring aggression and their relationship to mating circuits have not been clear. Genetic methods for neural circuit manipulation in mice provide a potentially powerful approach to this problem, but brain-stimulation-evoked aggression has never been demonstrated in this species. Here we show that optogenetic, but not electrical, stimulation of neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus, ventrolateral subdivision (VMHvl) causes male mice to attack both females and inanimate objects, as well as males. Pharmacogenetic silencing of VMHvl reversibly inhibits inter-male aggression. Immediate early gene analysis and single unit recordings from VMHvl during social interactions reveal overlapping but distinct neuronal subpopulations involved in fighting and mating. Neurons activated during attack are inhibited during mating, suggesting a potential neural substrate for competition between these opponent social behaviours.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Endocrine and Autonomic Systems, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a70e302b34bf26b961c74084c3b27b01966c1b93

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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

In Endocrine and Autonomic Systems

Joseph E LeDoux

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The ecology of human fear: survival optimization and the nervous system (2015, background): “Lin et al. used optogenetic techniques to show that stimulation of the ventrolateral subdivision of the ventromedial hypothalamus in rats results in the attack of conspecifics and inanimate objects (Lin et al., 2010).”
Permanent Genetic Access to Transiently Active Neurons via TRAP: Targeted Recombination in Active Populations (2013, neutral): “…the rodent primary visual cortex (Ohki et al., 2005), neurons that are activated by different odorants are distributed randomly in themouse piriform cortex (Stettler and Axel, 2009), and neurons activated during fighting or mating in mice are intermingled in multiple brain areas (Lin et al., 2011).”
Sexually dimorphic neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus govern mating in both sexes and aggression in males (2013, positive): “In fact, this region is activated during male aggression, and correspondingly, electrical activation or inhibition elicits or inhibits fighting, respectively (Kollack-Walker and Newman, 1995; Lin et al., 2011; Veening et al., 2005).”
RETHINKING THE EMOTIONAL BRAIN (2012, positive): “A recent study by Lin et al. (2011) showing distinct populations of cells in the ventromedial hypothalamus that contribute to mating and intruder attack is a prime example.”