Descending GABAergic pathway links brain sugar-sensing to peripheral nociceptive gating in Drosophila

Mami Nakamizo-Dojo, Kenichi Ishii, Jiro Yoshino, Masato Tsuji and Kazuo Emoto ()
Additional contact information
Mami Nakamizo-Dojo: The University of Tokyo
Kenichi Ishii: The University of Tokyo
Jiro Yoshino: The University of Tokyo
Masato Tsuji: The University of Tokyo
Kazuo Emoto: The University of Tokyo

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-18

Abstract: Abstract Although painful stimuli elicit defensive responses including escape behavior for survival, starved animals often prioritize feeding over escape even in a noxious environment. This behavioral priority is typically mediated by suppression of noxious inputs through descending control in the brain, yet underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms are incompletely understood. Here we identify a cluster of GABAergic neurons in Drosophila larval brain, designated as SEZ-localized Descending GABAergic neurons (SDGs), that project descending axons onto the axon terminals of the peripheral nociceptive neurons and prevent presynaptic activity through GABAB receptors. Remarkably, glucose feeding to starved larvae causes sustained activation of SDGs through glucose-sensing neurons and subsequent insulin signaling in SDGs, which attenuates nociception and thereby suppresses escape behavior in response to multiple noxious stimuli. These findings illustrate a neural mechanism by which sugar sensing neurons in the brain engages descending GABAergic neurons in nociceptive gating to achieve hierarchical interaction between feeding and escape behavior.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42202-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-42202-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42202-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().