Prelimbic area to lateral hypothalamus circuit drives social aggression

Fuhai Bai; Lu Huang; Jiao Deng; Zonghong Long; Xianglin Hao; Penghui Chen; Guangyan Wu; Huizhong Wen; Qiangting Deng; Xiaohang Bao; Jing Huang; Ming Yang; Defeng Li; Yukun Ren; Min Zhang; Ying Xiong; Hong Li

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.107718

Prelimbic area to lateral hypothalamus circuit drives social aggression

iScience. 2023 Aug 25;26(10):107718. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107718. eCollection 2023 Oct 20.

Authors

Fuhai Bai¹, Lu Huang¹, Jiao Deng², Zonghong Long¹, Xianglin Hao³, Penghui Chen⁴, Guangyan Wu⁵, Huizhong Wen⁴, Qiangting Deng⁶, Xiaohang Bao¹, Jing Huang¹, Ming Yang¹, Defeng Li⁷, Yukun Ren¹, Min Zhang¹, Ying Xiong⁴, Hong Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anesthesiology, Xinqiao Hospital, Army Medical University, Chongqing 400037, China.
² Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Xijing Hospital, Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710032, China.
³ Department of Pathology, Xinqiao Hospital, Army Medical University, Chongqing 400037, P.R. China.
⁴ Department of Neurobiology, Chongqing Key Laboratory of Neurobiology, Army Medical University, Chongqing 400038, China.
⁵ Experimental Center of Basic Medicine, College of Basic Medical Sciences, Army Medical University, Chongqing 400038, China.
⁶ Editorial Office of Journal of Army Medical University, Chongqing 400038, China.
⁷ Clinical Medical Research Center, Xinqiao Hospital, Army Medical University, Chongqing 400037, China.

Abstract

Controlling aggression is a vital skill in social species such as rodents and humans and has been associated with the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). In this study, we showed that during aggressive behavior, the activity of GABAergic neurons in the prelimbic area (PL) of the mPFC was significantly suppressed. Specific activation of GABAergic PL neurons significantly curbed male-to-male aggression and inhibited conditioned place preference (CPP) for aggression-paired contexts, whereas specific inhibition of GABAergic PL neurons brought about the opposite effect. Moreover, GABAergic projections from PL neurons to the lateral hypothalamus (LH) orexinergic neurons mediated aggressive behavior. Finally, directly modulated LH-orexinergic neurons influence aggressive behavior. These results suggest that GABAergic PL-orexinergic LH projection is an important control circuit for intermale aggressive behavior, both of which could be targets for curbing aggression.

Keywords: Behavioral neuroscience; Cellular neuroscience; Molecular neuroscience.