Topic: threat assessment

To survive, animals have to finely regulate their threat assessment and escape behavior. In mice, the brainstem dorsal periaqueductal gray (dPAG) generates innate defensive behaviors towards a multitude of threats, including predators, prey, and aggressive conspecifics. dPAG integrates threat information coming from diverse inputs with cognitive information coming from cortical areas such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Glutamatergic layer 5 neurons in ACC project to dPAG where they inhibit the expression of defensive behavior. In vivo single-unit recordings in dPAG identified two majo