ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
An aggression-specific cell type in the anterior hypothalamus of finches.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- Hypothalamic representation of aggressiveness across mouse strains.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Head Color Morph- and Sex-Specific Differences in Follistatin Gene Expression in the Gouldian Finch Brain.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2025Article
- Article
- Investigation of structural and neurobiochemical differences in brains from high-performance and native hen breeds.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Allele-specific cis-regulatory methylation of the gene for vasoactive intestinal peptide in white-throated sparrows.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2022Article
- Dynamic molecular evolution of a supergene with suppressed recombination in white-throated sparrows.eLife · 2022Article
- Mechanically evoked defensive attack is controlled by GABAergic neurons in the anterior hypothalamic nucleus.Nature neuroscience · 2022Article
- Experimental competition induces immediate and lasting effects on the neurogenome in free-living female birds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Inside the supergene of the bird with four sexes.Hormones and behavior · 2020Review
- Neural mechanisms of aggression across species.Nature neuroscience · 2020Review
- A supergene-linked estrogen receptor drives alternative phenotypes in a polymorphic songbird.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Brain transcriptomics of agonistic behaviour in the weakly electric fish Gymnotus omarorum, a wild teleost model of non-breeding aggression.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Vasoactive intestinal peptide as a mediator of the effects of a supergene on social behaviour.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Drd3 Signaling in the Lateral Septum Mediates Early Life Stress-Induced Social Dysfunction.Neuron · 2018Article
- Dynamic modulation of sociality and aggression: an examination of plasticity within endocrine and neuroendocrine systems.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Applying gene regulatory network logic to the evolution of social behavior.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- The Role of VIP in Social Behavior: Neural Hotspots for the Modulation of Affiliation, Aggression, and Parental Care.Integrative and comparative biology · 2016Article
- Molecular mechanisms and the conflict between courtship and aggression in three-spined sticklebacks.Molecular ecology · 2016Article
- Natural variation in brain gene expression profiles of aggressive and nonaggressive individual sticklebacks.Behaviour · 2016Article
- New perspectives on vasoactive intestinal polypeptide as a widespread modulator of social behavior.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2015Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The anterior hypothalamus (AH) is a major integrator of neural processes related to aggression and defense, but cell types in the AH that selectively promote aggression are unknown. We here show that aggression is promoted in a very selective and potent manner by dorsal AH neurons that produce vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP). Fos activity in a territorial finch, the violet-eared waxbill (Estrildidae: Uraeginthus granatina) is positively related to aggression in the dorsal AH, overlapping a population of VIP-producing neurons. VIP is known to promote territorial aggression in songbirds, and thus we used antisense oligonucleotides to selectively block AH VIP production in male and female waxbills. This manipulation virtually abolishes aggression, reducing the median number of displacements in a 3-min resident-intruder test from 38 in control subjects to 0 in antisense subjects. Notably, most antisense and control waxbills exhibit an agonistic response such as a threat or agonistic call within 2 s of intrusion. Thus, antisense subjects clearly classify intruders as offensive, but fail to attack. Other social and anxiety-like behaviors are not affected and VIP cell numbers correlate positively with aggression, suggesting that these cells selectively titrate aggression. Additional experiments in the gregarious zebra finch (Estrildidae: Taeniopygia guttata) underscore this functional specificity. Colony-housed finches exhibit significant reductions in aggression (primarily nest defense) following AH VIP knockdown, but no effects are observed for social preferences, pair bonding, courtship, maintenance behaviors, or anxiety-like behaviors. To our knowledge, these findings represent a unique identification of an aggression-specific cell type in the brain.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.