ArticleHormones and behavior2013
Variation in vasopressin receptor (Avpr1a) expression creates diversity in behaviors related to monogamy in prairie voles.
Article in Hormones and behavior, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 101 citations in OpenAlex.
- The prairie vole gut-brain-microbiota-axis: a narrative review.Gut microbiome (Cambridge, England) · 2026Review
- Romantic love as regulatory co-option of maternal-bonding circuitry: a testable genetic account.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- The neural substrates of behavioral evolution: Divergent behaviors from conserved neurons.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Connectivity and phenotype of vasopressin 1a receptor cells in the lateral septum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Sex difference in the effects of ventral pallidum vasopressin 1a receptor partial knockdown on social behavior in mice.Hormones and behavior · 2025Article
- Evolution of gene expression across brain regions in behaviourally divergent deer mice.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- In-silico analysis of deleterious non-synonymous SNPs in the human AVPR1a gene linked to autism.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- The paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus: a key node in the control of behavioural states.The Journal of physiology · 2025Review
- Characterization of oxytocin and vasopressin receptors in the Southern giant pouched rat and comparison to other rodents.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2024Article
- Review
- Distribution of vasopressin 1a and oxytocin receptor protein and mRNA in the basal forebrain and midbrain of the spiny mouse (Acomys cahirinus).Brain structure & function · 2023Article
- Modulation of social behavior by distinct vasopressin sources.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2023Review
- Socio-behavioral dysfunction in disorders of hypothalamic-pituitary involvement: The potential role of disease-induced oxytocin and vasopressin signaling deficits.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Review
- Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and Social Behavior: From Neural Circuits to Clinical Opportunities.Endocrinology · 2022Review
- Behavioral genetics and genomics: Mendel's peas, mice, and bees.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Distribution of brain oxytocin and vasopressin V1a receptors in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): comparison with humans and other primate species.Brain structure & function · 2022Article
- Oxytocin and vasopressin: Signalling, behavioural modulation and potential therapeutic effects.British journal of pharmacology · 2022Review
- Environmental Enrichment Protects Against Sepsis-Associated Encephalopathy-Induced Learning and Memory Deficits by Enhancing the Synthesis and Release of Vasopressin in the Supraoptic Nucleus.Journal of inflammation research · 2022Article
- Transcriptomic Regulations Underlying Pair-bond Formation and Maintenance in the Socially Monogamous Male and Female Prairie Vole.Biological psychiatry · 2022Article
- The neural circuits of monogamous behavior.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2022Review
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Polymorphisms in noncoding regions of the vasopressin 1a receptor gene (Avpr1a) are associated with a variety of socioemotional characteristics in humans, chimpanzees, and voles, and may impact behavior through a site-specific variation in gene expression. The socially monogamous prairie vole offers a unique opportunity to study such neurobiological control of individual differences in complex behavior. Vasopressin 1a receptor (V1aR) signaling is necessary for the formation of the pair bond in males, and prairie voles exhibit greater V1aR binding in the reward-processing ventral pallidum than do asocial voles of the same genus. Diversity in social behavior within prairie voles has been correlated to natural variation in neuropeptide receptor expression in specific brain regions. Here we use RNA interference to examine the causal relationship between intraspecific variation in V1aR and behavioral outcomes, by approximating the degree of naturalistic variation in V1aR expression. Juvenile male prairie voles were injected with viral vectors expressing shRNA sequences targeting Avpr1a mRNA into the ventral pallidum. Down-regulation of pallidal V1aR density resulted in a significant impairment in the preference for a mated female partner and a reduction in anxiety-like behavior in adulthood. No effect on alloparenting was detected. These data demonstrate that within-species naturalistic-like variation in V1aR expression has a profound effect on individual differences in social attachment and emotionality. RNA interference may prove to be a useful technique to unite the fields of behavioral ecology and neurogenetics to perform ethologically relevant studies of the control of individual variation and offer insight into the evolutionary mechanisms leading to behavioral diversity.
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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.