Topic: estrogen surge

Sex-steroid hormones powerfully influence internal states, mood, and social drives. In many species, including mice, females exhibit increased sexual receptivity during the peri-ovulatory phase following an estrogen surge. However, we lack understanding of how these hormones alter neural computations to regulate social behaviors, particularly their effects on neural dynamics in key regions for top-down control of social choice, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). One potential, but unexplored role of the estrogen surge is to enable persistent neural states to facilitate costly behavio