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    Home > Active Ingredient News > Study of Nervous System > Why do you whistle when you see a girl?

    Why do you whistle when you see a girl?

    • Last Update: 2021-04-18
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    Voice is the basic medium of mammalian communication, which can effectively convey information about individual reproduction, social status, emotional state, location and gender.

    Male mice can interact with information through urine smell pheromone or through social voice (USV) to achieve efficient communication.

    On March 31, 2021, the Lisa Stowers research team of the Department of Neuroscience at The Scripps Research Institute in California published an article in the journal Nature revealing the long-term hypothalamic-midbrain de-inhibition of neural circuits that regulates courtship vocal behavior in mice.

    Female urine activates the neurons in the preoptic region of male mice in large quantities.
    The smell of female mice can arouse male mice's desire to mate.

    Researchers found that after being exposed to the urine of female mice, most male mice made courtship sounds in the 40-90kHz frequency band within 2 minutes.

    In order to further determine the brain regions associated with this ultrasound, they found that after male mice smelled female mice, they mainly activated neurons in the lateral preoptic area of ​​the hypothalamus (LPOA) that express estrogen receptor 1, referred to below as LPOA-ESR neurons.

    Fiber-optic calcium imaging records the vocalization behavior of preoptic neurons.
    After injecting the AAV-GCaMP6s virus into the LPOA brain area of ​​ESR-cre mice, the calcium imaging fiber-optic recording system is used to find that the information is emitted after male mice sense urine.
    At the same time as the "roar", the calcium ion activity of LPOA-ESR neurons increased.

    This indicates that the "courtship" sound of male mice is closely related to the hypothalamic LPOA-ESR neurons.

    After light-activated LPOA-ESR neurons induce vocalization behavior and chemically genetically inhibited LPOA-ESR neurons, male mice will experience reduced social voice even after close contact with female mice.

    After light-activated LPOA-ESR neurons, even if the female urine is not smelled, male mice will make more social sounds.

    These results indicate that LPOA-ESR neurons are necessary for the production of social sounds.

    The LPOA-PAG excitatory neural circuit has been studied to show that the midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG) excitatory neurons are the key brain area for male mice to produce ultrasonic sound during courtship.

    After the retrograde tracer virus was injected into the PAG brain area of ​​Vglut2-cre mice, the projection fibers mainly existed in the LPOA brain area, which was subsequently called the LPOA-PAG excitatory neural circuit.

    The light activation of the neural circuit can promote the ultrasound vocalization behavior of mice.

    Therefore, projecting from LPOA to PAG excitatory neural loop may be the simplest feedforward excitatory loop to induce ultrasonic vocalization behavior.

    However, things are not so simple.
    In situ hybridization experiments have found that LPOA-ESR neurons have "dual identities": both inhibitory neurons and excitatory neurons (the ratio of inhibitory neurons to excitatory neurons is 5 to 1 ).

    Light-activated excitatory neurons in the LPOA brain area cannot promote the vocal behavior of mice, but activation of the inhibitory neurons in this brain area can promote the vocal behavior.

    This indicates that there may be a long-distance inhibitory effect in promoting vocalization behavior.

    LPOA-PAG inhibitory neural circuit PAG also has inhibitory neurons in the brain area.
    When this type of neuron is activated alone, it can prevent male mice from making ultrasonic sounds when they are in close contact with female mice.

    On the other hand, after they injected retrograde tracer virus into the PAG brain area of ​​Vgat-cre mice, about 80% of the projection neurons in the LPOA brain area were inhibitory neurons, which indicates that LPOA-PAG also has inhibitory neurons.
    Loop.

    The researchers further discovered that after chronic activation of PAG inhibitory neurons through chemical genetics technology, light activation of LPOA inhibitory neurons could not promote vocal behavior.

    These results indicate that LPOA inhibitory neurons can inhibit the inhibitory effect of PAG brain area inhibitory neurons, play a de-inhibitory effect, and then activate PAG brain area excitatory neurons to induce vocal behavior in mice.

    In general, this article further improves the neural circuit mechanism of the PAG brain area as a key brain area for vocal behavior: There is a local inhibitory neural circuit in the PAG brain area, that is, inhibitory neurons inhibit excitatory neurons, and hypothalamic vision The realization of the "long arm jurisdiction" mechanism of the frontal zone neurons removes this inhibitory effect, activates the excitatory neurons, and realizes the ultrasonic sounding behavior.

    [References] 1.
    https://doi.
    org/10.
    1038/s41586-021-03403-8 The pictures in the article are all from the references
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