Natalia Duque-Wilckens and Brian C. Trainor
Aggressive behavior plays an essential role in survival and reproduction across animal species—it has been observed in insects, fish, reptiles, and mammals including humans. Even though specific aggressive behaviors are quite heterogeneous across species, many of the underlying mechanisms modulating aggression are highly conserved. For example, in a variety of species arginine vasopressin (AVP) and its homologue vasotocin in the hypothalamus, play an important role in regulating aggressive behaviorssuch as territorial and inter male aggression. Similarly in the medial amygdala, activation of a subpopulation of GABAergic neurons promotes aggression, while the prefrontal cortex exerts inhibitory control over aggressive behaviors. An important caveat in the aggression literature is that it is focused primarily on males, probably because in most species males are more aggressive than females. However, female aggression is also highly prevalent in many contexts, as it can affect access to resources such as mates, food, and offspring survival. Although it is likely that many underlying mechanisms are shared between sexes, there is sex specific variation in aggression, type, magnitude, and contexts, which suggests that there are important sex differences in how aggression is regulated. For example, while AVP acts to modulate aggression in both male and female hamsters, it increases male aggression but decreases female aggression. These differences can occur at the extent of neurotransmitter or hormones release, sensitivity (i.e., receptor expression), and/or molecular responses.
In response to changes in metabolic demand, the cardiovascular and respiratory systems are regulated in a highly coordinated fashion, such that both ventilation and cardiac output increase in a parallel fashion, thus maintaining a relatively constant level of arterial blood PO2, PCO2, and pH. In addition, external alerting stimuli that trigger defensive or orienting behavioral responses also trigger coordinated cardiorespiratory changes that are appropriate for the particular behavior. Furthermore, environmental challenges such as hypoxia or submersion evoke complex cardiovascular and respiratory response that have the effect of increasing oxygen uptake and/or conserving the available oxygen.
The brain mechanisms that are responsible for generating coordinated cardiorespiratory responses can be divided into reflex mechanisms and feedforward (central command) mechanisms. Reflexes that regulate cardiorespiratory function arise from a wide variety of internal receptors, and include those that signal changes in blood pressure, the level of blood oxygenation, respiratory activity, and metabolic activity. In most cases more than one reflex is activated, so that the ultimate cardiorespiratory response depends upon the interaction between different reflexes. The essential central pathways that subserve these reflexes are largely located within the brainstem and spinal cord, although they can be powerfully modulated by descending inputs arising from higher levels of the brain. The brain defense mechanisms that regulate the cardiorespiratory responses to external threatening stimuli (e.g., the sight, sound, or odor of a predator) are highly complex, and include both subcortical and cortical systems. The subcortical system, which includes the basal ganglia and midbrain colliculi as essential components, is phylogenetically ancient and generates immediate coordinated cardiorespiratory and motor responses to external stimuli. In contrast, the defense system that includes the cortex, hypothalamus, and limbic system evolved at a later time, and is better adapted to generating coordinated responses to external stimuli that involve cognitive appraisal.
Brian P. Kenealy and Ei Terasawa
Female reproduction is an interplay between the hypothalamus, pituitary, and ovaries. While the gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) neuron in the hypothalamus regulates gonadal function through the pituitary, GnRH neuronal activity is also profoundly influenced by ovarian steroid hormones. GnRH is released from GnRH neurons in a pulsatile manner after integration of a diverse array of internal and external milieus. Since the discovery of the mammalian GnRH molecule, over a dozen GnRH forms have been identified in the animal kingdom, and large numbers of publications in various lab animal and human studies suggest that GnRH neurons are regulated by multiple neuromodulators in the brain, such as kisspeptin, neurokinin B, β-dynorphin, neuropeptide Y, GnIH, GABA, glutamate, and glial factors. A recent emerging concept is that steroids synthesized locally in the hypothalamus, namely, neuroestradiol and neuroprogesterone, also contribute to the regulation of GnRH neuronal activity, and hence female reproduction. Together with modulation by various inputs and ovarian steroid feedback, GnRH neurons are responsible for puberty, cyclic ovulation, and menopause.
Gretchen N. Neigh, Mandakh Bekhbat, and Sydney A. Rowson
Bidirectional interactions between the immune system and central nervous system have been acknowledged for centuries. Over the past 100 years, pioneering studies in both animal models and humans have delineated the behavioral consequences of neuroimmune activation, including the different facets of sickness behavior. Rodent studies have uncovered multiple neural pathways and mechanisms that mediate anorexia, fever, sleep alterations, and social withdrawal following immune activation. Furthermore, work conducted in human patients receiving interferon treatment has elucidated some of the mechanisms underlying immune-induced behavioral changes such as malaise, depressive symptoms, and cognitive deficits.
These findings have provided the foundation for development of treatment interventions for conditions in which dysfunction of immune-brain interactions leads to behavioral pathology. Rodent models of neuroimmune activation frequently utilize endotoxins and cytokines to directly stimulate the immune system. In the absence of pathogen-induced inflammation, a variety of environmental stressors, including psychosocial stressors, also lead to neuroimmune alterations and concurrent behavioral changes. These behavioral alterations can be assessed using a battery of behavioral paradigms while distinguishing acute sickness behavior from the type of behavioral outcome being assessed. Animal studies have also been useful in delineating the role of microglia, the neuroendocrine system, neurotransmitters, and neurotrophins in mediating the behavioral implications of altered neuroimmune activity. Furthermore, the timing and duration of neuroimmune challenge as well as the sex of the organism can impact the behavioral manifestations of altered neuroimmune activity. Finally, neuroimmune modulation through pharmacological or psychosocial approaches has potential for modulating behavior.
Robert S. Bridges
Prolactin (PRL) is a protein hormone with a molecular weight of approximately 23 KD, although variants in size exist. It binds to receptor dimers on the cytoplasmic surface of its target cells and acts primarily through the activation of the STAT5 pathway, which in turn alters gene activity. Pituitary prolactin, while being the main, but not only, source of PRL, is primarily under inhibitory control by hypothalamic dopaminergic neurons. Release of dopamine (DA) into the hypothalamo-hypophyseal portal system binds on DA D2 receptors on PRL-producing lactotrophs within the anterior pituitary gland. Prolactin’s functions include the regulation of behaviors that include maternal care, anxiety, and feeding as well as lactogenesis, hepatic bile formation, immune function, corpora lutea function, and more generally cell proliferation and differentiation. Dysfunctional conditions related to prolactin’s actions include its role in erectile dysfunction and male infertility, mood disorders such as depression during the postpartum period, possible roles in breast and hepatic cancer, prostate hyperplasia, galactorrhea, obesity, immune function, and diabetes. Future studies will further elucidate both the underlying mechanisms of prolactin action together with prolactin’s involvement in these clinical disorders.
Understanding of the brain mechanisms regulating reproductive behaviors in female laboratory animals has been aided greatly by our knowledge of estrogen receptors in the brain. Hypothalamic neurons that express the gene for estrogen receptor-alpha regulate activity in the neural circuit for the simplest female reproductive response, lordosis behavior. In turn, many of the neurotransmitter inputs to the critical hypothalamic neurons have been studied using electrophysiological and neurochemical techniques. The upshot of all of these studies is that lordosis behavior presents the best understood set of mechanisms for any mammalian behavior.
Jacques Balthazart and Gregory F. Ball
It is well established that testosterone from testicular origin plays a critical role in the activation of male sexual behavior in most, if not all, vertebrate species. These effects take place to a large extent in the preoptic area although other brain sites are obviously also implicated. In its target areas, testosterone is actively metabolized either into estrogenic and androgenic steroids that have specific behavioral effects or into inactive metabolites. These transformations either amplify the behavioral activity of testosterone or, alternatively, metabolism to an inactive compound dissipates any biological effect. Androgens and estrogens then bind to nuclear receptors that modulate the transcription of specific genes. This process is controlled by a variety of co-activators and co-repressors that, respectively, enhance or inhibit these transcriptional processes. In addition, recent work has shown that the production of estrogens by brain aromatase can be modulated within minutes by changes in neural activity and that these rapid changes in neuroestrogen production impact sexual behavior, in particular sexual motivation within the same time frame. Estrogens thus affect specific aspects of male sexual behavior in two different time frames via two types of mechanisms that are completely different. Multiple questions remain open concerning the cellular brain mechanisms that mediate testosterone action on male sexual behavior.
Alyssa L. Pedersen and Colin J. Saldanha
Given the profound influence of steroids on the organization and activation of the vertebrate central nervous system (CNS), it is perhaps not surprising that these molecules are involved in processes that restructure the cytoarchitecture of the brain. This includes processes such as neurogenesis and the connectivity of neural circuits. In the last 30 years or so, we have learned that the adult vertebrate brain is far from static; it responds to changes in androgens and estrogens, with dramatic alterations in structure and function. Some of these changes have been directly linked to behavior, including sex, social dominance, communication, and memory. Perhaps the most dramatic levels of neuroplasticity are observed in teleosts, where circulating and centrally derived steroids can affect several end points, including cell proliferation, migration, and behavior. Similarly, in passerine songbirds and mammals, testosterone and estradiol are important modulators of adult neuroplasticity, with documented effects on areas of the brain necessary for complex behaviors, including social communication, reproduction, and learning. Given that many of the cellular processes that underlie neuroplasticity are often energetically demanding and temporally protracted, it is somewhat surprising that steroids can affect physiological and behavioral end points quite rapidly. This includes recent demonstrations of extremely rapid effects of estradiol on synaptic neurotransmission and behavior in songbirds and mammals. Indeed, we are only beginning to appreciate the role of temporally and spatially constrained neurosteroidogenesis, like estradiol and testosterone being made in the brain, on the rapid regulation of complex behaviors.