Abstract
The neural control of social behaviors in rodents requires the encoding of pheromonal cues by the vomeronasal system. Here we show that the typical preference of male mice for females is eliminated in mutants lacking oxytocin, a neuropeptide modulating social behaviors in many species. Ablation of the oxytocin receptor in aromatase-expressing neurons of the medial amygdala (MeA) fully recapitulates the elimination of female preference in males. Further, single-unit recording in the MeA uncovered significant changes in the sensory representation of conspecific cues in the absence of oxytocin signaling. Finally, acute manipulation of oxytocin signaling in adults is sufficient to alter social interaction preferences in males as well as responses of MeA neurons to chemosensory cues. These results uncover the critical role of oxytocin signaling in a molecularly defined neuronal population in order to modulate the behavioral and physiological responses of male mice to females on a moment-to-moment basis.
Highlights
A fundamental goal of neuroscience is to understand how brain circuits control behavior
To investigate a potential role of OXT in the modulation of sex-specific social preference behaviors, we compared the preference of C57BL/6J OXT knockout male mice (Oxt-/-) and wild-type littermate controls (Oxt+/+) in investigating female versus male conspecifics (Figure 1A)
After an initial habituation period of 10 min in a 3-chamber paradigm with an empty wire cup in each side chamber (Yang et al, 2011), Oxt+/+ and Oxt-/- mice were allowed to explore the arena with a novel male confined in the wire cup in one side chamber and a novel female confined in the wire cup in the other side chamber
Summary
A fundamental goal of neuroscience is to understand how brain circuits control behavior. The nonapetides oxytocin (OXT) and vasopressin (AVP) represent an important set of neuromodulators that are produced by discrete populations of hypothalamic neurons in response to social signals and according to an animal’s physiological state (Donaldson and Young, 2008; Knobloch and Grinevich, 2014; Landgraf and Neumann, 2004; Veenema and Neumann, 2008) These nonapeptides are evolutionarily conserved across vertebrate and invertebrate species, and it has been proposed that sex- and species-specific differences OXT and AVP systems may underlie genetic variations in social behavior control (Bendesky et al, 2017; Caldwell, 2017; Johnson and Young, 2017; Knobloch and Grinevich, 2014; Lockard et al, 2017; Vaidyanathan and Hammock, 2017)
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