Citation

Kohl J, Babayan BM, Rubinstein ND, Autry AE, Marin-Rodriguez B, Kapoor V, Miyamishi K, Zweifel LS, Luo L, Uchida N, Dulac C. Nature 2018; 556(7701): 326-331.

Affiliation

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. dulac@fas.harvard.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/s41586-018-0027-0

PMID

29643503

Abstract

Parenting is essential for the survival and wellbeing of mammalian offspring. However, we lack a circuit-level understanding of how distinct components of this behaviour are coordinated. Here we investigate how galanin-expressing neurons in the medial preoptic area (MPOA^Gal) of the hypothalamus coordinate motor, motivational, hormonal and social aspects of parenting in mice. These neurons integrate inputs from a large number of brain areas and the activation of these inputs depends on the animal's sex and reproductive state. Subsets of MPOA^Gal neurons form discrete pools that are defined by their projection sites. While the MPOA^Gal population is active during all episodes of parental behaviour, individual pools are tuned to characteristic aspects of parenting. Optogenetic manipulation of MPOA^Gal projections mirrors this specificity, affecting discrete parenting components. This functional organization, reminiscent of the control of motor sequences by pools of spinal cord neurons, provides a new model for how discrete elements of a social behaviour are generated at the circuit level.

Language: en