Transformations of neural representations in a social behaviour network

Bin Yang, Tomomi Karigo and David J. Anderson ()
Additional contact information
Bin Yang: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering 140-80, TianQiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience, California Institute of Technology
Tomomi Karigo: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering 140-80, TianQiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience, California Institute of Technology
David J. Anderson: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering 140-80, TianQiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience, California Institute of Technology

Nature, 2022, vol. 608, issue 7924, 741-749

Abstract: Abstract Mating and aggression are innate social behaviours that are controlled by subcortical circuits in the extended amygdala and hypothalamus1–4. The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNSTpr) is a node that receives input encoding sex-specific olfactory cues from the medial amygdala5,6, and which in turn projects to hypothalamic nuclei that control mating7–9 (medial preoptic area (MPOA)) and aggression9–14 (ventromedial hypothalamus, ventrolateral subdivision (VMHvl)), respectively15. Previous studies have demonstrated that male aromatase-positive BNSTpr neurons are required for mounting and attack, and may identify conspecific sex according to their overall level of activity16. However, neural representations in BNSTpr, their function and their transformations in the hypothalamus have not been characterized. Here we performed calcium imaging17,18 of male BNSTprEsr1 neurons during social behaviours. We identify distinct populations of female- versus male-tuned neurons in BNSTpr, with the former outnumbering the latter by around two to one, similar to the medial amygdala and MPOA but opposite to VMHvl, in which male-tuned neurons predominate6,9,19. Chemogenetic silencing of BNSTprEsr1 neurons while imaging MPOAEsr1 or VMHvlEsr1 neurons in behaving animals showed, unexpectedly, that the male-dominant sex-tuning bias in VMHvl was inverted to female-dominant whereas a switch from sniff- to mount-selective neurons during mating was attenuated in MPOA. Our data also indicate that BNSTprEsr1 neurons are not essential for conspecific sex identification. Rather, they control the transition from appetitive to consummatory phases of male social behaviours by shaping sex- and behaviour-specific neural representations in the hypothalamus.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05057-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:608:y:2022:i:7924:d:10.1038_s41586-022-05057-6

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05057-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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