Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Program in Biomedical and Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2021 Feb 15;12(1):1040. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21248-7.
Animals exhibit innate defense behaviors in response to approaching threats cued by the dynamics of sensory inputs of various modalities. The underlying neural circuits have been mostly studied in the visual system, but remain unclear for other modalities. Here, by utilizing sounds with increasing (vs. decreasing) loudness to mimic looming (vs. receding) objects, we find that looming sounds elicit stereotypical sequential defensive reactions: freezing followed by flight. Both behaviors require the activity of auditory cortex, in particular the sustained type of responses, but are differentially mediated by corticostriatal projections primarily innervating D2 neurons in the tail of the striatum and corticocollicular projections to the superior colliculus, respectively. The behavioral transition from freezing to flight can be attributed to the differential temporal dynamics of the striatal and collicular neurons in their responses to looming sound stimuli. Our results reveal an essential role of the striatum in the innate defense control.
动物会针对各种感觉输入模式的动态所提示的逼近威胁表现出先天防御行为。这些潜在的神经回路在视觉系统中得到了广泛研究，但对于其他感觉模式仍不清楚。在这里，我们利用声音强度逐渐增加（而非降低）来模拟逼近（而非远离）的物体，发现逼近的声音会引发刻板的连续防御反应：先是冻结，然后是逃跑。这两种行为都需要听觉皮层的活动，特别是持续型反应，但分别由主要投射到纹状体尾部 D2 神经元的皮质纹状体投射和投射到上丘的皮质脑桥投射来介导。从冻结到逃跑的行为转变可以归因于纹状体和脑丘神经元对逼近声音刺激反应的时间动态的差异。我们的结果揭示了纹状体在先天防御控制中的重要作用。
Zotero 插件
