ArticleScience advances2022
A cerebellar-prepontine circuit for tonic immobility triggered by an inescapable threat.
Article in Science advances, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Astrocyte-induced internal state transitions reshape brainwide sensory, integrative, and motor computations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Imaging cellular activity simultaneously across all organs of a vertebrate reveals body-wide circuits.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Ketamine induces plasticity in a norepinephrine-astroglial circuit to promote behavioral perseverance.Neuron · 2025Article
- Fantastic beasts and how to study them: rethinking experimental animal behavior.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Sudden changes in the environment are frequently perceived as threats and provoke defensive behavioral states. One such state is tonic immobility, a conserved defensive strategy characterized by powerful suppression of movement and motor reflexes. Tonic immobility has been associated with multiple brainstem regions, but the underlying circuit is unknown. Here, we demonstrate that a strong vibratory stimulus evokes tonic immobility in larval zebrafish defined by suppressed locomotion and sensorimotor responses. Using a circuit-breaking screen and targeted neuron ablations, we show that cerebellar granule cells and a cluster of glutamatergic ventral prepontine neurons (vPPNs) that express key stress-associated neuropeptides are critical components of the circuit that suppresses movement. The complete sensorimotor circuit transmits information from sensory ganglia through the cerebellum to vPPNs to regulate reticulospinal premotor neurons. These results show that cerebellar regulation of a neuropeptide-rich prepontine structure governs a conserved and ancestral defensive behavior that is triggered by an inescapable threat.
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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.