School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 201210, China.
Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
Neurosci Bull. 2023 May;39(5):817-831. doi: 10.1007/s12264-022-01018-1. Epub 2023 Jan 27.
Predatory hunting is an important type of innate behavior evolutionarily conserved across the animal kingdom. It is typically composed of a set of sequential actions, including prey search, pursuit, attack, and consumption. This behavior is subject to control by the nervous system. Early studies used toads as a model to probe the neuroethology of hunting, which led to the proposal of a sensory-triggered release mechanism for hunting actions. More recent studies have used genetically-trackable zebrafish and rodents and have made breakthrough discoveries in the neuroethology and neurocircuits underlying this behavior. Here, we review the sophisticated neurocircuitry involved in hunting and summarize the detailed mechanism for the circuitry to encode various aspects of hunting neuroethology, including sensory processing, sensorimotor transformation, motivation, and sequential encoding of hunting actions. We also discuss the overlapping brain circuits for hunting and feeding and point out the limitations of current studies. We propose that hunting is an ideal behavioral paradigm in which to study the neuroethology of motivated behaviors, which may shed new light on epidemic disorders, including binge-eating, obesity, and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
掠夺性狩猎是一种重要的先天行为类型，在动物界中得到了进化上的保守。它通常由一系列连续的动作组成，包括猎物搜索、追逐、攻击和消耗。这种行为受到神经系统的控制。早期的研究曾使用蟾蜍作为模型来探究狩猎的神经行为学，这导致了狩猎行为的感觉触发释放机制的提出。最近的研究使用可遗传追踪的斑马鱼和啮齿动物，在这种行为的神经行为学和神经回路方面取得了突破性的发现。在这里，我们综述了参与狩猎的复杂神经回路，并总结了该回路用于编码狩猎神经行为学各个方面的详细机制，包括感觉处理、感觉运动转换、动机和狩猎动作的顺序编码。我们还讨论了狩猎和进食的重叠脑回路，并指出了当前研究的局限性。我们提出，狩猎是研究动机行为的神经行为学的理想行为范例，这可能为包括暴食症、肥胖症和强迫症在内的流行疾病提供新的见解。
