PLoS Biology (Aug 2019)

Direct auditory cortical input to the lateral periaqueductal gray controls sound-driven defensive behavior.

  • Haitao Wang,
  • Jiahui Chen,
  • Xiaotong Xu,
  • Wen-Jian Sun,
  • Xi Chen,
  • Fei Zhao,
  • Min-Hua Luo,
  • Chunhua Liu,
  • Yiping Guo,
  • Wen Xie,
  • Hui Zhong,
  • Tongjian Bai,
  • Yanghua Tian,
  • Yu Mao,
  • Chonghuan Ye,
  • Wenjuan Tao,
  • Jie Li,
  • Zahra Farzinpour,
  • Juan Li,
  • Jiang-Ning Zhou,
  • Kai Wang,
  • Jufang He,
  • Lin Chen,
  • Zhi Zhang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000417
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 17, no. 8
p. e3000417

Abstract

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Threatening sounds can elicit a series of defensive behavioral reactions in animals for survival, but the underlying neural substrates are not fully understood. Here, we demonstrate a previously unexplored neural pathway in mice that projects directly from the auditory cortex (ACx) to the lateral periaqueductal gray (lPAG) and controls noise-evoked defensive behaviors. Electrophysiological recordings showed that the lPAG could be excited by a loud noise that induced an escape-like behavior. Trans-synaptic viral tracing showed that a great number of glutamatergic neurons, rather than GABAergic neurons, in the lPAG were directly innervated by those in layer V of the ACx. Activation of this pathway by optogenetic manipulations produced a behavior in mice that mimicked the noise-evoked escape, whereas inhibition of the pathway reduced this behavior. Therefore, our newly identified descending pathway is a novel neural substrate for noise-evoked escape and is involved in controlling the threat-related behavior.