Department of Neurobiology and Department of Neurology of Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310058, China; NHC and CAMS Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology, MOE Frontier Science Center for Brain Research and Brain-Machine Integration, School of Brain Science and Brain Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University City College, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310015, China.
Neuron. 2021 May 5;109(9):1540-1553.e9. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.03.002. Epub 2021 Mar 18.
Although aggressive behaviors are universal and essential for survival, "uncontrollable" and abnormal aggressive behaviors in animals or humans may have severe adverse consequences or social costs. Neural circuits regulating specific forms of aggression under defined conditions have been described, but how brain circuits govern a general aggressive response remains unknown. Here, we found that posterior substantia innominata (pSI) neurons responded to several aggression-provoking cues with the graded activity of differential dynamics, predicting the aggressive state and the topography of aggression in mice. Activation of pSI neurons projecting to the periaqueductal gray (PAG) increased aggressive arousal and robustly initiated/promoted all the types of aggressive behavior examined in an activity-level-dependent manner. Inactivation of the pSI circuit largely blocked diverse aggressive behaviors but not mating. By encoding a general aggressive response, the pSI-PAG circuit universally drives multiple aggressive behaviors and may provide a potential target for alleviating human pathological aggression.
尽管攻击行为是普遍存在且对生存至关重要的，但动物或人类的“无法控制”和异常攻击行为可能会产生严重的不良后果或社会成本。已经描述了调节特定形式攻击行为的神经回路，在特定条件下，但大脑回路如何控制一般攻击反应尚不清楚。在这里，我们发现后丘脑下部核（pSI）神经元对几种攻击诱发线索的反应具有不同动力学的分级活动，可预测小鼠的攻击状态和攻击的分布情况。激活投射到导水管周围灰质（PAG）的 pSI 神经元以活动水平依赖的方式增加攻击唤醒，并强有力地启动/促进了所检查的所有类型的攻击行为。pSI 回路的失活在很大程度上阻止了多种攻击行为，但不会阻止交配。通过编码一般攻击反应，pSI-PAG 回路普遍驱动多种攻击行为，可能为缓解人类病理性攻击提供潜在目标。
