Yang Taehong, Yang Cindy F, Chizari M Delara, Maheswaranathan Niru, Burke Kenneth J, Borius Maxim, Inoue Sayaka, Chiang Michael C, Bender Kevin J, Ganguli Surya, Shah Nirao M
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Program in Neuroscience, UC San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Neuron. 2017 Aug 16;95(4):955-970.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.06.046. Epub 2017 Jul 27.
How environmental and physiological signals interact to influence neural circuits underlying developmentally programmed social interactions such as male territorial aggression is poorly understood. We have tested the influence of sensory cues, social context, and sex hormones on progesterone receptor (PR)-expressing neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) that are critical for male territorial aggression. We find that these neurons can drive aggressive displays in solitary males independent of pheromonal input, gonadal hormones, opponents, or social context. By contrast, these neurons cannot elicit aggression in socially housed males that intrude in another male's territory unless their pheromone-sensing is disabled. This modulation of aggression cannot be accounted for by linear integration of environmental and physiological signals. Together, our studies suggest that fundamentally non-linear computations enable social context to exert a dominant influence on developmentally hard-wired hypothalamus-mediated male territorial aggression.
环境信号和生理信号如何相互作用以影响诸如雄性领地攻击等发育程序化社会互动背后的神经回路，目前人们还知之甚少。我们测试了感觉线索、社会环境和性激素对腹内侧下丘脑（VMH）中表达孕激素受体（PR）的神经元的影响，这些神经元对雄性领地攻击至关重要。我们发现，这些神经元可以在独立于信息素输入、性腺激素、对手或社会环境的情况下，驱动独居雄性的攻击行为。相比之下，这些神经元无法在侵入另一只雄性领地的群居雄性中引发攻击行为，除非它们的信息素感知能力被禁用。这种攻击行为的调节不能通过环境信号和生理信号的线性整合来解释。总之，我们的研究表明，根本上的非线性计算使社会环境能够对发育上固定的下丘脑介导的雄性领地攻击产生主导影响。
