Cao, Mingran;
Ammari, Rachida;
Chen, Maxwell X;
Wai, Patty;
Jamieson, Bradley B;
Liang, Swang;
Husain, Basma FA;
... Kohl, Johannes; + view all
(2025)
Integration of hunger and hormonal state gates infant-directed aggression.
Nature
10.1038/s41586-025-09651-2.
(In press).
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Abstract
Social behaviour is substantially shaped by internal physiological states. Although progress has been made in understanding how individual states such as hunger, stress or arousal modulate behaviour1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, animals experience multiple states at any given time10. The neural mechanisms that integrate such orthogonal states—and how this integration affects behaviour—remain poorly understood. Here we report how hunger and oestrous state converge on neurons in the medial preoptic area (MPOA) to shape infant-directed behaviour. We find that hunger promotes pup-directed aggression in normally non-aggressive virgin female mice. This behavioural switch occurs through the inhibition of MPOA neurons, driven by the release of neuropeptide Y from Agouti-related peptide-expressing neurons in the arcuate nucleus (ArcAgRP neurons). The propensity for hunger-induced aggression is set by reproductive state, with MPOA neurons detecting changes in the progesterone to oestradiol ratio across the oestrous cycle. Hunger and oestrous state converge on hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels, which sets the baseline activity and excitability of MPOA neurons. Using microendoscopy imaging, we confirm these findings in vivo, revealing that MPOA neurons encode a state for pup-directed aggression. This work provides a mechanistic understanding of how multiple physiological states are integrated to flexibly control social behaviour.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Integration of hunger and hormonal state gates infant-directed aggression |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41586-025-09651-2 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09651-2 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Developmental Biology and Cancer Dept |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10216044 |
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