A Neural Circuit Of The Modulation Of The Visual Danger Cue Evoked Innate Defensive Behaviors By Fasting

The innate behaviors are critical to the survival of species.The foraging behavior and the defensive behavior that in the face of threats are belonged to innate behaviors When there is a conflict between the two behaviors,the brain function plays an important role in regulating the hierarchical relationshipThis research selected the foraging behavior of starvation and the visual danger cue evoked innate defensive behaviors and chose mice as the research object.We aim to analyze the neural circuit mechanism of the modulation of the visual stimulation evoked innate defensive behaviors by fastingFirstly,we wonder if hunger has an effect on defensive behavior in mice.After quantification of starvation in mice,we test the mice behavior parameter that visual danger cue evoked innate defensive behaviors.Quantitative analysis of behavioral parameters,we found that starvation can inhibit instinctual defensive behavior from the visual cueAnd then,In order to analyze the neural mechanism of hunger regulation of fear We confirmed that AgRP neurons in ARC will serve as the target brain region and neuron type for us to explore the defensive behavior of hunger regulation.Using neural circuits tracing,,we confirmed the AgRP neurons downstream brain regionsFinally,through optogenetics and chemogenetics,cell-type specific activation methods,activate the AgRP neurons in both short-and long-term ranges.Our results provided that the short-term activation of AgRP neurons wouldn't inhibit the defensive behavior while the long-activation have the inhibition effect.