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    Home > Active Ingredient News > Study of Nervous System > Cell Sub-Journal: Long-term social inactivity makes males more violent and females further away from society. This neural circuit is actually "behind the scenes."

    Cell Sub-Journal: Long-term social inactivity makes males more violent and females further away from society. This neural circuit is actually "behind the scenes."

    • Last Update: 2021-04-14
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    Click on the blue word to pay attention to the violent fluctuations in our body hormone levels before and after puberty.
    In addition, this period is also a critical period for brain development.

    Therefore, adolescence is more sensitive to stress.

    At present, multiple pre-clinical studies have shown that animals that experience stress early show anxiety, depression and other emotional disorders in adulthood.

    Due to the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the incidence of depression has increased.
    In addition to the stress caused by the epidemic itself, isolation at home and maintaining social distance have also promoted the onset of depression and anxiety to a certain extent.

    Animal experiments have clearly shown that this social isolation can cause anxiety, depression and mood disorders, and increase aggressive behavior in male mice.

    However, this kind of chronic stress has obvious gender differences: brain changes are different, hormone changes are different, and behaviors are also different.

    On March 23, 2021, the ZhenYan research team of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, State University of New York at Buffalo, revealed the gender-specific behavioral phenotype of social isolation, and further revealed the top-down neural circuit that regulates this gender difference mechanism.

    Increased aggressive behavior of male mice after chronic social isolation.
    Researchers used a single cage rearing model to simulate social isolation.
    They kept adolescent female and male mice aged 3 weeks in a single cage for 5 consecutive weeks, and found that the male mice were significantly aggressive Intensified, female mice showed obvious social avoidance and were unwilling to communicate with their kind.

    The prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the basolateral amygdala (BLA), and the ventral tegmental area of ​​the midbrain (VTA) are the key brain areas for stress-related aggressive behaviors, social behaviors, and emotions.
    The mPFC serves as the brain command center and controls Advanced functions such as learning and memory, social cognition, decision-making, and emotion.Electrophysiological detection of mouse PFC neuron firing activity during the attack.
    Researchers embedded 16-channel electrodes in the mPFC brain regions of female and male mice raised in a single cage, and found that the male mice were before the resident-intruder experiment.
    The firing activity of neurons is weakened.
    In the process of aggressive behavior, the firing activity of neurons increases, or weakens, or does not change, but overall the proportion of neurons with weakened firing activity is higher, reaching 29.
    8%, while neurons with increased firing activity The ratio is only 7%.

    Female mice did not change their neuronal firing activity before social activities, but the firing activity pattern of a single neuron in the social process was similar to that of male mice, with a higher proportion of weakened neuronal firing activity and spontaneous excitability.
    The postsynaptic current is weakened.

    This indicates that the weakening of the firing activity of pyramidal neurons in the PFC brain area is closely related to the aggressive behavior of male mice and the social disorder of female mice.

    The researchers further used chemical genetics technology to chronically activate the neurons in the mPFC brain region of male mice, and their aggressive behavior was significantly weakened, and then electrophysiologically detected that the neuronal discharge activity in this brain region increased during the aggressive behavior.

    After activating the neurons in the mPFC brain region of female mice, the social behavior disorder was improved, and at the same time, the electrophysiological detection in the body increased the firing activity of neurons in this brain region in the aggressive behavior.

    Studies have shown that mPFC achieves top-to-bottom control through direct excitatory synaptic connections with BLA and negative feedback inhibitory neural circuits.

    The amygdala brain area is involved in the enhancement of aggressive behavior caused by stress.

    Researchers found that activating mPFC neurons significantly inhibited the action potentials of BLA brain neurons and enhanced their spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents, indicating that the input projected by mPFC to BLA exerts an inhibitory effect through negative feedback.

    Chronic inhibition of BLA brain neurons can reduce the aggressive behavior of chronic socially isolated male mice, and exert an effect similar to chronic activation of PFC neurons.

    Studies have shown that there is a neural circuit between mPFC-VTA.

    Researchers chronically activated neurons in the PFC brain region can enhance the activity of dopamine neurons in the VTA brain region; chronic activation of dopamine neurons in the VTA brain region can also directly promote the social behavior of female mice.

    In general, this article reveals that female and male mice exhibit different social behavior disorders after long-term social isolation.
    The mPFC-BLA inhibitory neural circuit is responsible for the aggressive behavior of male mice, and the mPFC-VTA circuit is responsible for the female small The social behavior of rats.

    [References] 1.
    https://doi.
    org/10.
    1016/j.
    celrep.
    2021.
    108874 The pictures in the article are all from the references
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