Molecular and neural mechanisms of predator cue sensation

捕食者提示感觉的分子和神经机制

• 批准号: 10553235
• 负责人: Sachiko Haga-Yamanaka
• 金额: $ 32.46万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-02-01 至 2026-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10553235
• 关键词: Acute; Afferent Neurons; Animals; Anxiety; Behavior; Behavior assessment; Behavioral; Brain; Brain Mapping; Chemicals; Cues; Data; Decision Making; Detection; Emotions; Esthesia; Exhibits; Felis catus; Freezing; Fright; Genetic; Impairment; Individual; Knockout Mice; Literature; Mediating; Modality; Modeling; Molecular; Mus; Neurons; Neurosciences; Organ; Output; Pharmacogenetics; Population; Process; Property; Proteins; Protocols documentation; Receptor Gene; Recombinants; Risk Assessment; Saliva; Sensory; Sensory Receptors; Signal Induction; Signal Transduction; Smell Perception; Stress; Stretching; Testing; anxiety-related behavior; behavioral response; emotional behavior; experimental study; insight; mutant mouse model; neural; neural circuit; neuromechanism; receptor; response; saliva mediated; saliva sample; sensory stimulus; tool; vigilance

Understanding how animals make behavioral decisions is one of the biggest problems in neuroscience. The proposed study aims to understand molecular and neural mechanisms underlying innate defensive behaviors elicited by chemical cues from predator species. Defensive responses to predatory threats are made through a pre-programmed defensive brain circuit, which has an ability to instantly make an appropriate behavioral decision upon sensing predator-derived sensory stimuli. It is widely appreciated that olfaction is one of the major sensory modalities through which predator-derived chemical cues trigger behavioral responses in prey species. When prey animals detect immediate danger in predator cues, they exhibit acute defense behaviors such as freezing or flight. On the other hand, when prey animals detect only potential danger in predator cues, they exhibit vigilance and risk assessment behaviors such as repetitive stretched sniffing. An important question in behavioral neuroscience is whether these defensive decisions for predatory threats are made through distinct neural circuits or by a shared neural population. Our preliminary data establish a framework of the proposed study to dissect defensive behavioral circuitries activated by predator cues through the vomeronasal chemosensory organ (VNO), which trigger either freezing or risk assessment behaviors in mice. In this proposal, we aim to identify the freezing- and risk assessment-inducing predator cues and their sensory receptors in the VNO, and to assess whether the sensory signals induce behavioral outputs through independent, parallel circuitries, or they are integrated in the brain to induce an appropriate behavior. Our central hypothesis is that different predator cues are detected by distinct sensory receptor circuitries and elicit distinct defensive behavioral outputs in parallel. To test this hypothesis, we will investigate mechanisms of the predator cue sensation at molecular levels; more specifically, we will first identify the sensory stimuli (Aim 1) and the sensory receptors (Aim 2). Moreover, using freezing- and risk assessment-inducing sensory cues as tools, we will further examine whether the defensive decision towards predator cues is made by independent neural circuitries or not (Aim 3). The results from these experiments will provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the sensory processing in predator cue sensation, and will reveal an operational principle of decision making circuitries for emotional behaviors. This will critically contribute to our understanding of pre-programmed brain machinery that underlies multiple levels of fear and stress processing in response to threat.

了解动物如何做出行为决定是神经科学中最大的问题之一。的 这项研究旨在了解先天防御行为背后的分子和神经机制 是由捕食者的化学信号引起的。对掠夺性威胁的防御性反应是通过 预先编程的防御性大脑回路，能够立即做出适当的行为决定 感受到来自捕食者的感官刺激人们普遍认为，嗅觉是主要的感觉之一， 模式，通过捕食者衍生的化学线索触发猎物物种的行为反应。当 被捕食的动物在捕食者的暗示中察觉到即时的危险，它们表现出急性防御行为，如冻结 或飞行。另一方面，当被捕食动物只从捕食者的线索中发现潜在的危险时，它们会表现出 警惕性和风险评估行为，如重复拉伸嗅探。行为学中的一个重要问题 神经科学的问题是，这些针对掠夺性威胁的防御性决定是否是通过不同的神经回路做出的 或者由共享的神经群体控制。我们的初步数据建立了一个拟议研究的框架， 通过犁鼻化学感觉器官（VNO）由捕食者线索激活的防御行为回路， 从而引发小鼠的冻结或风险评估行为。在本建议中，我们的目的是确定 冷冻和风险评估诱导捕食者线索及其在VNO的感觉受体，并评估 感觉信号是否通过独立的并行电路诱导行为输出，或者它们是 整合到大脑中以诱导适当的行为。我们的核心假设是不同的捕食者线索 被不同的感觉感受器回路检测到，并平行地引发不同的防御行为输出。到 为了验证这一假设，我们将在分子水平上研究捕食者线索感觉的机制;更多 具体来说，我们将首先确定感觉刺激（目标1）和感觉受体（目标2）。此外，使用 冷冻和风险评估诱导的感官线索作为工具，我们将进一步研究是否防御 对捕食者线索的决定是否由独立的神经回路做出（目标3）。结果从这些 实验将提供新的见解的分子机制的感觉处理， 捕食者线索感觉，并将揭示决策电路的运作原则，情绪 行为。这将极大地有助于我们理解大脑的预编程机制， 对威胁的多层次恐惧和压力处理。