Neural circuits for stress-induced water drinking in relief of anxiety
Abstract
Drinking water is a rapid, instinctive behavior of mammals following stress. The role of such stress-induced water drinking behavior and its neural mechanisms remain poorly known. Here, we identify two sequentially activated neural circuits that respectively mediate stress-induced drinking behavior and reward encoding, which collectively promote the extinction of anxiety-like behaviors in mice. Specifically, mild short-term stress induces anxiety-like behaviors and activates glutamatergic neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC Glu ) projecting to glutamatergic neurons in the median preoptic nucleus (MnPO Glu ), consequently driving drinking behavior in mice. This drinking behavior subsequently activates GABAergic neurons in the MnPO (MnPO GABA ), which then inhibit GABAergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA GABA ), leading to disinhibition of reward-encoding dopaminergic VTA neurons (VTA DA ), ultimately mediating the extinction of stress-induced anxiety-like behaviors. The present study defines cortical–hypothalamic–midbrain connections underlying the anxiety-relieving effects of drinking behavior, providing a circuit basis for innate stress coping strategies.
Article Details
Journal Info
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
National Academy of Sciences
Authors (14)
Lan Tang
Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Center for Advance Interdisciplinary Science and Biomedicine of Institute of Health and Medicine, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China
Run-Jie Wu
Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Center for Advance Interdisciplinary Science and Biomedicine of Institute of Health and Medicine, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China
Hong-Yu Li
Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Center for Advance Interdisciplinary Science and Biomedicine of Institute of Health and Medicine, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China
Hong-Rui Wei
Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China
Jing-Bo Duan
Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Center for Advance Interdisciplinary Science and Biomedicine of Institute of Health and Medicine, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China
Qianqian Lou
Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China
Le-Xian Li
Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Center for Advance Interdisciplinary Science and Biomedicine of Institute of Health and Medicine, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China
Xin-Lu Yang
Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China
Wei Gao
Min Zhu
Zhi Zhang
Sen Qun
Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China
Yuanzhong Kai
Department of Biopharmaceuticals, School of Life Sciences and Medical Engineering, Anhui University
Yan Jin