Citation

Motta SC, Guimarães CC, Furigo IC, Sukikara MH, Baldo MV, Lonstein JS, Canteras NS. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2013; 110(35): 14438-14443.

Affiliation

Departamento de Anatomia and Departamento de Fisiologia e Biofísica, Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade de São Paulo, SP 05508-000, São Paulo, Brazil.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, National Academy of Sciences)

DOI

10.1073/pnas.1305581110

PMID

23918394

Abstract

Maternal aggression is under the control of a wide variety of factors that prime the females for aggression or trigger the aggressive event. Maternal attacks are triggered by the perception of sensory cues from the intruder, and here we have identified a site in the hypothalamus of lactating rats that is highly responsive to the male intruder-the ventral premammillary nucleus (PMv). The PMv is heavily targeted by the medial amygdalar nucleus, and we used lesion and immediate-early gene studies to test our working hypothesis that the PMv signals the presence of a male intruder and transfers this information to the network organizing maternal aggression. PMv-lesioned dams exhibit significantly reduced maternal aggression, without affecting maternal care. The Fos analysis revealed that PMv influences the activation of hypothalamic and septal sites shown to be mobilized during maternal aggression, including the medial preoptic nucleus (likely to represent an important locus to integrate priming stimuli critical for maternal aggression), the caudal two-thirds of the hypothalamic attack area (comprising the ventrolateral part of the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus and the adjacent tuberal region of the lateral hypothalamic area, critical for the expression of maternal aggression), and the ventral part of the anterior bed nuclei of the stria terminalis (presently discussed as being involved in controlling neuroendocrine and autonomic responses accompanying maternal aggression). These findings reveal an important role for the PMv in detecting the male intruder and how this nucleus modulates the network controlling maternal aggression.

Language: en