Aggressive behavior

Alcoholism has been linked extensively to violence and aggressive behavior. About half of all violent crimes and sexual assaults are committed under the influence of alcohol. However, the underlying neuroanatomical mechanism of this connection remains elusive. Previous research in our group points at the somatostatin neurons in the medial amygdala as a relevant regulator of this behavior. In this work, we have investigated sex-specific behavioral alterations after chronic alcohol intoxication. Also, we have considered neuronal activity changes and introduced an emerging therapeutic target. Onl

…focused on the role of PIL neurons in aggressive behavior. For chemogenetic manipulation of PIL neurons, we injected AAV into the PIL, which expressed excitatory and inhibitory DREADD. In a separate experiment, we selectively tagged socially c-Fos-activated neurons in the PIL. On the first day of the experiments, a vehicle was injected followed by male intruder test 1.5 hours later. On the next da

Brain serotonin (5-HT) is one of the key regulators of aggressive behavior and social defeat stress mechanisms. We had previously found that abolishing central 5-HT biosynthesis increases aggression, as tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (Tph2-/-) knockout rats (TPH2-KO) are more aggressive than wild-type (WT) counterparts. In this elaboration, we compared different types of intruders to expand our understanding of the aggressive phenotype in TPH2-KO rats. The resident-intruder paradigm was applied to evaluate the territorial aggression of rats, where isolated residents (TPH2-KO, WT male, 36 weeks, n=9)

Vaccinia-related kinase 2 (VRK2) VRK2 is one of the serine/threonine kinases that was originally identified in highly proliferative cells such as thymocytes and fetal liver cells. GWAS studies were reported that VRK2 was related molecule with neuropsychiatric diseases. And in vitro studies reported that VRK2 plays an important role in cell division and cell cycle regulation. However, little is known about the molecular mechanism and physiological function of VRK2 on the central nervous systems in vivo. In this study, we established vrk2 deficient (VRK2 KO) zebrafish and found that VRK2 KO body

…mechanisms leading to the emergence of aggressive behavior remain to be poorly understood. To analyze such mechanisms, we used a mouse chronic social conflict paradigm where multiple aggressive phenotypes were formed, for which we obtained behavioral readouts (134 mice) and whole-brain snapshots of neuronal activity (c-Fos; 54 mice