Back

Selection of active defensive behaviors relies on extended amygdala dopamine D2 receptors

Castell, L.; Le Gall, V.; Cutando, L.; Puighermanal, E.; Jercog, D.; Tarot, P.; Tassou, A.; Harrus, A.-G.; Rubinstein, M.; Nouvian, R. M.; Rivat, C.; Herry, C.; Valjent, E.

2021-02-24 neuroscience
10.1101/2021.02.24.432692 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The ability to efficiently switch from one defensive strategy to another maximizes an animals chance of survival. Here, we demonstrate that the selection of active defensive behaviors requires the coordinated activation of dopamine D2 receptor (D2R) signaling within the central extended amygdala (EA) comprising the nucleus accumbens, the oval bed nucleus stria terminals and the central amygdala. We find that discriminative learning between predictive and non-predictive threat auditory stimuli is unaltered in mice carrying a temporally-controlled deletion of D2R within output neurons of the EA. In contrast, intact EA D2R signaling is required for active avoidance learning and innate flight responses triggered by a visual threat stimulus (looming). Consequently, conditional D2R knockout mice biased defensive responses toward passive defensive strategies. Altogether, these findings identify EA D2R signaling as an important mechanism by which DA regulates the switch from passive to active defensive behaviors, regardless whether of learned or innate threat.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.