Final Report Summary - COREFEAR (Functional wiring of the core neural network of innate fear)
The project established a fundamental understanding of how regions in the most ancient part of the brain that control behavior, the hypothalamus, allow for mice to defend themselves in an appropriate way to predator and social threats. The research found that a core region on the hypothalamic fear network, the ventromedial hypothalamus, encodes a generalized internal state of threat in mice, with the dorsomedial part responding to and controlling predator fear and the ventrolateral part responding to and controlling social fear. By observing the firing of neurons in these regions the research showed, moreover, that the region controlling social threat also encodes a map of territory that can tell the animal if it is in the territory of another animal or in its own territory. Moreover, the project examined how the experience of social defeat – being repeatedly bullied by a member of your species – causes structural changes across the brain and identified specific changes in neural activity and connectivity that accompanied and was responsible for the socially avoidant behavior that characterizes bullied animals. These findings help to describe the neural circuit basis of fear-related behavior and are likely to be widely applicable across bilaterian species, including humans.