Abstract
All organisms possess innate behavioural and physiological programmes that ensure survival. In order to have maximum adaptive benefit, these programmes must be sufficiently flexible to account for changes in the environment. Here we show that hypothalamic CRH neurons orchestrate an environmentally flexible repertoire of behaviours that emerge after acute stress in mice. Optical silencing of CRH neurons disrupts the organization of individual behaviours after acute stress. These behavioural patterns shift according to the environment after stress, but this environmental sensitivity is blunted by activation of PVN CRH neurons. These findings provide evidence that PVN CRH cells are part of a previously unexplored circuit that matches precise behavioural patterns to environmental context following stress. Overactivity in this network in the absence of stress may contribute to environmental ambivalence, resulting in context-inappropriate behavioural strategies.
Highlights
All organisms possess innate behavioural and physiological programmes that ensure survival
We combined cell-specific optogenetic targeting with the assessment of multiple behaviours to demonstrate that paraventricular nucleus (PVN) corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) neurons orchestrate a complex repertoire of behaviours after an acute stress
This behavioural repertoire does not require endocrine signalling, but rather relies on an excitatory, glutamatergic projection to a subset of neurons in the perifornical region of the lateral hypothalamus (LH). These behaviours are exquisitely sensitive to environmental context, the selective activation of CRH neurons can over-ride the environmental cues, resulting in behaviours that appear mismatched to the context. These findings provide a new framework for assessing behaviours after stress and suggest that animals de-escalate their behaviours after stress in a specific pattern that is influenced by the environment and the activity of PVN CRH neurons
Summary
All organisms possess innate behavioural and physiological programmes that ensure survival. Optical silencing of CRH neurons disrupts the organization of individual behaviours after acute stress These behavioural patterns shift according to the environment after stress, but this environmental sensitivity is blunted by activation of PVN CRH neurons. These findings provide evidence that PVN CRH cells are part of a previously unexplored circuit that matches precise behavioural patterns to environmental context following stress. We focused on corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) cells of the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus These cells are responsible for launching the endocrine component of the mammalian stress response[12], but there are indications they may regulate complex behaviours after stress. Understanding the specific nodes that control the behavioural sequence after stress may offer unique insights that facilitate our understanding of how the brain helps to re-set after stress
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