ArticleNature2014
Scalable control of mounting and attack by Esr1+ neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus.
Article in Nature, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 271 papers.
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Who cites it
271 citing papers in PubMed, 493 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Sex differences in resting-state hypothalamic connectivity and its relationship with negative emotion and behavior measures in young adults.Brain structure & function · 2026Article
- Sexual Dimorphism in c-Fos Networks Governing Aggression.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Advancing insights into the neuroendocrine basis of socio-sexual interactions in mammals.Endocrinology · 2026Review
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- Early-life inflammation increases aggressive behavior in adult male mice through an astrocyte-neuron signaling.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Spatially resolved molecular sex differences at single-cell resolution in the adult human ventromedial and arcuate hypothalamus.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Estradiol and social withdrawal in addiction: a sex-specific neuroendocrine perspective.Oxford open neuroscience · 2026Article
- Sex differences in the neural circuitry of aggression.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A bifunctional optical reporter for tracking estrogen response dynamics in neurons.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) nNOS neurons regulate social behaviors in a sex-specific manner.Communications biology · 2025Article
211 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Social behaviours, such as aggression or mating, proceed through a series of appetitive and consummatory phases that are associated with increasing levels of arousal. How such escalation is encoded in the brain, and linked to behavioural action selection, remains an unsolved problem in neuroscience. The ventrolateral subdivision of the murine ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) contains neurons whose activity increases during male-male and male-female social encounters. Non-cell-type-specific optogenetic activation of this region elicited attack behaviour, but not mounting. We have identified a subset of VMHvl neurons marked by the oestrogen receptor 1 (Esr1), and investigated their role in male social behaviour. Optogenetic manipulations indicated that Esr1(+) (but not Esr1(-)) neurons are sufficient to initiate attack, and that their activity is continuously required during ongoing agonistic behaviour. Surprisingly, weaker optogenetic activation of these neurons promoted mounting behaviour, rather than attack, towards both males and females, as well as sniffing and close investigation. Increasing photostimulation intensity could promote a transition from close investigation and mounting to attack, within a single social encounter. Importantly, time-resolved optogenetic inhibition experiments revealed requirements for Esr1(+) neurons in both the appetitive (investigative) and the consummatory phases of social interactions. Combined optogenetic activation and calcium imaging experiments in vitro, as well as c-Fos analysis in vivo, indicated that increasing photostimulation intensity increases both the number of active neurons and the average level of activity per neuron. These data suggest that Esr1(+) neurons in VMHvl control the progression of a social encounter from its appetitive through its consummatory phases, in a scalable manner that reflects the number or type of active neurons in the population.
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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.