Abstract:

Exposure to predators or predator-like stimuli elicit powerful negative emotions and uncontrollable escape responses across animal species. Over the last decade we have dissected the brain circuits that mediate such innate threat responses in mice in order to learn more about human fear. We have identified the subcortical pathways that mediate innate responses to predators and shown that these are independent from those that mediate responses to social threats. We have recorded the responses of individual neurons while animals initiate escape from threat and have identified local hypothalamic and brainstem microcircuits that supports the escape decision. More recently, we have found that social hierarchy and social context can modulate the threshold for escape from a social threat, showing that innate emotional behavior responses can be reshaped by experience. We are currently exploring how territoriality impacts social fear and aggression, and how our neurocircuit findings in the mouse may be relevant for human social behavior.