title: Antagonistic control of social versus repetitive self-grooming behaviors by separable amygdala neuronal subsets.
abstract: Animals display a range of innate social behaviors that play essential roles in survival and reproduction. While the medial amygdala (MeA) has been implicated in prototypic social behaviors such as aggression, the circuit-level mechanisms controlling such behaviors are not well understood. Using cell-type-specific functional manipulations, we find that distinct neuronal populations in the MeA control different social and asocial behaviors. A GABAergic subpopulation promotes aggression and two other social behaviors, while neighboring glutamatergic neurons promote repetitive self-grooming, an asocial behavior. Moreover, this glutamatergic subpopulation inhibits social interactions independently of its effect to promote self-grooming, while the GABAergic subpopulation inhibits self-grooming, even in a nonsocial context. These data suggest that social versus repetitive asocial behaviors are controlled in an antagonistic manner by inhibitory versus excitatory amygdala subpopulations, respectively. These findings provide a framework for understanding circuit-level mechanisms underlying opponency between innate behaviors, with implications for their perturbation in psychiatric disorders.
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
authors.forename: Weizhe
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.affiliation: Program of Computation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
authors.forename: Dong-Wook
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. Electronic address: wuwei@caltech.edu.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Anderson
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D000679:Amygdala / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D006120:Grooming; D066298:In Vitro Techniques; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D005680:gamma-Aminobutyric Acid / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D005680:gamma-Aminobutyric Acid