Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Neuroscience, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016, and Division of Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125.
J Neurosci. 2014 Apr 23;34(17):5971-84. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5109-13.2014.
The ventromedial hypothalamus, ventrolateral area (VMHvl) was identified recently as a critical locus for inter-male aggression. Optogenetic stimulation of VMHvl in male mice evokes attack toward conspecifics and inactivation of the region inhibits natural aggression, yet very little is known about its underlying neural activity. To understand its role in promoting aggression, we recorded and analyzed neural activity in the VMHvl in response to a wide range of social and nonsocial stimuli. Although response profiles of VMHvl neurons are complex and heterogeneous, we identified a subpopulation of neurons that respond maximally during investigation and attack of male conspecific mice and during investigation of a source of male mouse urine. These "male responsive" neurons in the VMHvl are tuned to both the inter-male distance and the animal's velocity during attack. Additionally, VMHvl activity predicts several parameters of future aggressive action, including the latency and duration of the next attack. Linear regression analysis further demonstrates that aggression-specific parameters, such as distance, movement velocity, and attack latency, can model ongoing VMHvl activity fluctuation during inter-male encounters. These results represent the first effort to understand the hypothalamic neural activity during social behaviors using quantitative tools and suggest an important role for the VMHvl in encoding movement, sensory, and motivation-related signals.
腹内侧下丘脑腹外侧区（VMHvl）最近被确定为雄性间攻击的关键部位。光遗传学刺激雄性小鼠的 VMHvl 会引发对同种动物的攻击，而该区域的失活会抑制自然攻击，但关于其潜在的神经活动知之甚少。为了了解其在促进攻击中的作用，我们记录和分析了 VMHvl 对广泛的社会和非社会刺激的神经活动。尽管 VMHvl 神经元的反应模式复杂且具有异质性，但我们确定了一小部分神经元在雄性同种小鼠的调查和攻击以及雄性小鼠尿液来源的调查过程中反应最大。VMHvl 中的这些“雄性反应”神经元对雄性间的距离和攻击时动物的速度都有最大的反应。此外，VMHvl 活性预测了未来攻击行为的几个参数，包括下一次攻击的潜伏期和持续时间。线性回归分析进一步表明，攻击特异性参数，如距离、运动速度和攻击潜伏期，可以模拟雄性间相遇期间 VMHvl 活动的波动。这些结果代表了首次使用定量工具来理解下丘脑在社会行为中的神经活动的努力，并表明 VMHvl 在编码运动、感觉和动机相关信号方面发挥着重要作用。
