Sexually Dimorphic Control of Parenting Behavior by the Medial Amygdala

Overview

Journal Cell

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Cell Biology

Date 2019 Feb 19

PMID 30773317

Citations 70

Authors

Patrick B Chen

Rongfeng K Hu

Ye Emily Wu

Lin Pan

Shan Huang

Paul E Micevych

Weizhe Hong

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Social behaviors, including behaviors directed toward young offspring, exhibit striking sex differences. Understanding how these sexually dimorphic behaviors are regulated at the level of circuits and transcriptomes will provide insights into neural mechanisms of sex-specific behaviors. Here, we uncover a sexually dimorphic role of the medial amygdala (MeA) in governing parental and infanticidal behaviors. Contrary to traditional views, activation of GABAergic neurons in the MeA promotes parental behavior in females, while activation of this population in males differentially promotes parental versus infanticidal behavior in an activity-level-dependent manner. Through single-cell transcriptomic analysis, we found that molecular sex differences in the MeA are specifically represented in GABAergic neurons. Collectively, these results establish crucial roles for the MeA as a key node in the neural circuitry underlying pup-directed behaviors and provide important insight into the connection between sex differences across transcriptomes, cells, and circuits in regulating sexually dimorphic behavior.

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