A Substantia Innominata-Midbrain Circuit Controls a General Aggressive Response

• DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3652335
• Publication Date: 2020-08-13T12:17:06Z
• Authors: Zhenggang Zhu; Qingqing Ma; Hongbin Yang; Lu Miao; Lina Pan; Kaiyuan Li; Xiaoxing Zhang; Jintao Wu; Sijia Hao; Shen Lin; Xiulin Ma; Weihao Mai; Yizhe Hao; Yanqin Yu; Shumin Duan

While aggressive behaviors are universal and essential for survival, ‘uncontrollable’ and abnormal aggressive behaviors in animals or humans may have severe adverse consequences or social costs. Neural circuits regulating specific forms of aggression under defined conditions have been described, but whether brain circuits governing a general aggressive response remains unknown. Here, we found that posterior substantia innominata (pSI) neurons responded to multiple aggression-provoking cues with the graded activity of differential dynamics, predicting the aggressive state and the topography of aggression in mice. Activation of pSI neurons projecting to the periaqueductal gray (PAG) increased aggressive arousal and robustly initiated/promoted all the types of aggressive behavior examined in an activity level-dependent manner. Inactivation of the pSI circuit largely blocked diverse aggressive behaviors, but not mating. By encoding a general aggressive response, the pSI-PAG circuit universally drives multiple aggressive behaviors and thus may provide a potential target for alleviating human pathological aggression.