Understand the neural mechanism underlying aggressive motivation

了解攻击动机背后的神经机制

• 批准号: 9035058
• 负责人: Dayu Lin
• 金额: $ 21.19万
• 依托单位: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-04-01 至 2018-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9035058
• 关键词: Accelerometer; Acute; Address; Affect; Aggressive behavior; Animals; Area; Behavior; Brain; Cell Communication; Cells; Chronic; Cognitive; Crime; Data; Electrophysiology (science); Ensure; Estrogen Receptor alpha; Female; Fiber; Fishes; Health; Human; Hunger; Hypothalamic structure; Imaging Device; Individual; Invertebrates; Knowledge; Lead; Learning; Light; Link; Molecular; Monitor; Motivation; Motor; Mus; Neuronal Dysfunction; Neurons; Nose; Operant Conditioning; Pan Genus; Phase; Photometry; Physical aggression; Play; Population; Primates; Resources; Rewards; Role; Sensory; Social Behavior; Societies; Source; Staging; Testing; Time; Training; Violence; Woman; Work; World Health Organization; base; bullying; design; experience; follow-up; in vivo; interest; male; motor control; neural circuit; neuromechanism; optical imaging; pleasure; prevent; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; reproductive success; response; sensory input; sex; sexual predators; sexual violence; social; treatment strategy

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Aggression is an innate social behavior across invertebrate and vertebrate species. For most individuals, aggression is essential to protect their resources and ensure reproductive success when interference arises. However, for some individuals, aggression appears to be a source of pleasure. Many examples show that certain individuals across a range of species, from fish to primates, will voluntarily seek out the opportunity to engage in aggressive actions. For humans, bullying, stalking, and sexual predation are among the many forms of aggression-seeking behaviors that negatively affect our society. Treatments that suppress aggression-seeking behaviors would be especially useful given that they could prevent potential aggressive actions without compromising general social, cognitive, and motor abilities. Unfortunately, little is known about what brain activity promotes the aggression-seeking behavior and consequently no treatment is currently available to specifically suppress aggressive motivation. In response to this knowledge gap, our studies seek to understand how the aggressive impulses emerge in the brain. In our previous studies, we identified the ventrolateral part of the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) as being indispensable for inter-male attack. Whereas activation of the VMHvl induces acute attack towards both male and female conspecifics, suppression of the VMHvl reduces natural inter-male attack. However, it remains unclear whether the VMHvl only controls the motor expression of attack or also determines sensory-independent aggression- seeking behaviors. To address this question, we designed a "self-initiated aggression" (SIA) task that allows us to temporarily separate the seeking phase and the action phase of aggression. During the task, the animal learns to voluntarily nose poke to gain access to a weaker intruder that they can attack. Using this task, we found that the VMHvl activity can substantially modulate the aggressive motivation in mice. In this study we will follow up on these initial findings and examine the natural VMHvl cell activity during the SIA task at both the single-cell and population levels. Through this study we hope to shed some new light onto the neural origin of aggressive motivation.

 描述（由申请人提供）：攻击性是无脊椎动物和脊椎动物与生俱来的社会行为。对于大多数人来说，攻击性对于保护他们的利益至关重要 资源并确保出现干扰时繁殖成功。然而，对于某些人来说，攻击性似乎是快乐的源泉。许多例子表明，从鱼类到灵长类动物等一系列物种的某些个体会自愿寻找机会进行攻击性行为。对于人类来说，欺凌、跟踪和性掠夺是对我们的社会产生负面影响的多种形式的寻求攻击的行为之一。抑制寻求攻击行为的治疗将特别有用，因为它们可以在不损害一般社交、认知和运动能力的情况下防止潜在的攻击行为。不幸的是，人们对哪些大脑活动会促进寻求攻击行为知之甚少，因此目前还没有专门抑制攻击动机的治疗方法。为了应对这一知识差距，我们的研究试图了解攻击性冲动是如何在大脑中出现的。在我们之前的研究中，我们发现下丘脑腹内侧部分（VMHvl）的腹外侧部分对于男性之间的攻击是不可或缺的。 VMHvl 的激活会诱导对雄性和雌性同种的急性攻击，而 VMHvl 的抑制会减少雄性间的自然攻击。然而，目前尚不清楚 VMHvl 是否仅控制攻击的运动表达，或者还决定与感觉无关的攻击寻求行为。为了解决这个问题，我们设计了一个“自我发起攻击”（SIA）任务，它允许我们暂时将攻击的寻求阶段和行动阶段分开。在任务过程中，动物学会主动用鼻子戳，以接近它们可以攻击的较弱的入侵者。通过这项任务，我们发现 VMHvl 活性可以显着调节小鼠的攻击动机。在这项研究中，我们将跟进这些初步发现，并在单细胞和群体水平上检查 SIA 任务期间的自然 VMHvl 细胞活性。通过本次研究 我们希望对攻击性动机的神经起源有一些新的认识。