Make war not love: The neural substrate underlying a state-dependent switch in female social behavior.

ABSTRACT: Female mice exhibit opposing social behaviors toward males depending on their reproductive state: virgins display sexual receptivity (lordosis behavior), while lactating mothers attack. How a change in reproductive state produces a qualitative switch in behavioral response to the same conspecific stimulus is unknown. Using single-cell RNA-seq, we identify two distinct subtypes of estrogen receptor-1-positive neurons in the ventrolateral subdivision of the female ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) and demonstrate that they causally control sexual receptivity and aggressiveness in virgins and lactating mothers, respectively. Between- and within-subject bulk-calcium recordings from each subtype reveal that aggression-specific cells acquire an increased responsiveness to social cues during the

SUBMITTER: Liu M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8897222 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature