Encoding of female mating dynamics by a hypothalamic line attractor

Mengyu Liu, Aditya Nair, Nestor Coria, Scott W. Linderman and David J. Anderson ()
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Mengyu Liu: California Institute of Technology
Aditya Nair: California Institute of Technology
Nestor Coria: California Institute of Technology
Scott W. Linderman: Stanford University
David J. Anderson: California Institute of Technology

Nature, 2024, vol. 634, issue 8035, 901-909

Abstract: Abstract Females exhibit complex, dynamic behaviours during mating with variable sexual receptivity depending on hormonal status1–4. However, how their brains encode the dynamics of mating and receptivity remains largely unknown. The ventromedial hypothalamus, ventrolateral subdivision contains oestrogen receptor type 1-positive neurons that control mating receptivity in female mice5,6. Here, unsupervised dynamical system analysis of calcium imaging data from these neurons during mating uncovered a dimension with slow ramping activity, generating a line attractor in neural state space. Neural perturbations in behaving females demonstrated relaxation of population activity back into the attractor. During mating, population activity integrated male cues to ramp up along this attractor, peaking just before ejaculation. Activity in the attractor dimension was positively correlated with the degree of receptivity. Longitudinal imaging revealed that attractor dynamics appear and disappear across the oestrus cycle and are hormone dependent. These observations suggest that a hypothalamic line attractor encodes a persistent, escalating state of female sexual arousal or drive during mating. They also demonstrate that attractors can be reversibly modulated by hormonal status, on a timescale of days.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07916-w

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