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Neural circuits

Grooming's innate, innit?

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 15, pages 700–701 (2014)Cite this article

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Innate behaviours, such as feeding, grooming and certain types of fear, are essential for survival. Much remains unknown about the mechanisms that trigger and regulate these behaviours, but a new study by Anderson and colleagues shows that inhibitory and excitatory neuron populations in the posterior dorsal part of the medial amygdala (MeApd) antagonistically regulate social behaviour and self-grooming (a non-social behaviour) in mice.

The MeApd consists of GABAergic and glutamatergic neurons, and the authors next investigated whether one or both of these populations regulate the promotion of aggression. Labelling studies revealed that after an attack, more than 90% of activated (c-fos-expressing) cells in the MeApd were GABAergic and less than 10% of activated cells were glutamatergic. Moreover, optogenetic activation of GABAergic MeApd cells in male mice triggered aggressive behaviour towards normal and castrated male intruders, as well as female intruders. Conversely, optogenetic inhibition of these neurons three seconds after the onset of an attack halted the aggressive behaviour. These findings indicated that GABAergic MeApd neurons are both necessary and sufficient for promoting aggressive behaviour.

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References

  1. Hong, W., Kim, D.-W. & Anderson, D. J. Antagonistic control of social versus repetitive self-grooming behaviors by separable amygdala neuronal subsets. Cell 158, 1348–1361 (2014)

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  1. Leonie Welberg
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Welberg, L. Grooming's innate, innit?. Nat Rev Neurosci 15, 700–701 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3845

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3845

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