Topic: optrode stimulation

Defensive behaviours are a range of strategies that an organism employs to cope with threatening stimuli. In social animals like mice, threats can be in the form of aggressive conspecifics, competing for territory and resources for male mice, or unwanted social interactions, like sexual advances from unfamiliar males for female mice. These aversive situations can be de-escalated by the avoidance of the threat, displaying submissive postures or even by defensive attack. The ventrolateral subdivision of the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) has been shown to be essential for the expression of bo