ArticleBehavioural brain research2023
Dominance status modulates activity in medial amygdala cells with projections to the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis.
Article in Behavioural brain research, 2023. 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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4 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Distinguishing neural ensembles in the infralimbic cortex that regulate stress vulnerability and coping behavior.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Article
- Repeated social stress increases posterior medial amygdala neuronal activity in stress-susceptible adult male rats.Journal of neurophysiology · 2025Article
- Activation of androgen receptor-expressing neurons in the posterior medial amygdala is associated with stress resistance in dominant male hamsters.Hormones and behavior · 2024Article
- Acute social defeat during adolescence promotes long-lasting aggression through activation of the medial amygdala.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Article
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7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
The medial amygdala (MeA) controls several types of social behavior via its projections to other limbic regions. Cells in the posterior dorsal and posterior ventral medial amygdala (MePD and MePV, respectively) project to the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and these pathways respond to chemosensory cues and regulate aggressive and defensive behavior. Because the BNST is also essential for the display of stress-induced anxiety, a MePD/MePV-BNST pathway may modulate both aggression and responses to stress. In this study we tested the hypothesis that dominant animals would show greater neural activity than subordinates in BNST-projecting MePD and MePV cells after winning a dominance encounter as well as after losing a social defeat encounter. We created dominance relationships in male and female Syrian hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus), used cholera toxin b (CTB) as a retrograde tracer to label BNST-projecting cells, and collected brains for c-Fos staining in the MePD and MePV. We found that c-Fos immunoreactivity in the MePD and MePV was positively associated with aggression in males, but not in females. Also, dominant males showed a greater proportion of c-Fos+ /CTB+ double-labeled cells compared to their same-sex subordinate counterparts. Another set of animals received social defeat stress after acquiring a dominant or subordinate social status and we stained for stress-induced c-Fos expression in the MePD and MePV. We found that dominant males showed a greater proportion of c-Fos+ /CTB+ double-labeled cells in the MePD after social defeat stress compared to subordinates. Also, dominants showed a longer latency to submit during social defeat than subordinates. Further, in males, latency to submit was positively associated with the proportion of c-Fos+ /CTB+ double-labeled cells in the MePD and MePV. These findings indicate that social dominance increases neural activity in BNST-projecting MePD and MePV cells and activity in this pathway is also associated with proactive responses during social defeat stress. In sum, activity in a MePD/MePV-BNST pathway contributes to status-dependent differences in stress coping responses and may underlie experience-dependent changes in stress resilience.
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