Topic: social threat

Work has shown that the ventrolateral division of the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) encodes a generalized state of social threat and is necessary and sufficient for producing both social aggression and avoidance. However, it remains unclear how the selection between aggression and avoidance occurs and how this selection might support the animal's adaptation to its environment.We have shown that neurons in VMHvl that fire in the context of social defeat are reactivated when the animal explores the location where the defeat occurred, even in absence of the aggressor. At the neural population

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