Corticostriatal control of defense behavior in mice induced by auditory looming cues

Abstract

Animals exhibit innate defense behaviors in response to approaching threats cued by the dynamics of sensory inputs of various modalities. The underlying neural circuits have been mostly studied in the visual system, but remain unclear for other modalities. Here, by utilizing sounds with increasing (vs. decreasing) loudness to mimic looming (vs. receding) objects, we find that looming sounds elicit stereotypical sequential defensive reactions: freezing followed by flight. Both behaviors require the activity of auditory cortex, in particular the sustained type of responses, but are differentially mediated by corticostriatal projections primarily innervating D2 neurons in the tail of the striatum and corticocollicular projections to the superior colliculus, respectively. The behavioral transition from freezing to flight can be attributed to the differential temporal dynamics of the striatal and collicular neurons in their responses to looming sound stimuli. Our results reveal an essential role of the striatum in the innate defense control.

Behavioral origin of sound-evoked activity in mouse visual cortex

“…These observations suggest that other aspects of neural activity previously interpreted as being multisensory might also arise from changes in states or behavior. Stereotyped body movements can be elicited not only by sounds [8][9][10][11] but also by images [26][27][28][29][30] and odors 27,31 . Given the extensive correlates of body movement observed throughout the brain [12][13][14]32,33 these observations reinforce the importance of monitoring behavioral state and body movement when interpreting sensoryevoked activity.…”

“…However, there is a possible alternative explanation for these apparent multisensory signals. Sounds can change internal state and evoke uninstructed body movements [8][9][10][11] . Internal state and body movements correlate with activity in many brain regions [12][13][14] , including V1 [15][16][17] .…”

MEYE: Web App for Translational and Real-Time Pupillometry

“…3 A , B ). The AS experiment was conducted with the same structure as the VR experiment and using auditory stimulus previously used to induce a defensive behavior detectable as a pupillary and behavioral response ( Xiong et al, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2019 ; Hersman et al, 2020 ; Li et al, 2021 ). An initial period of habituation was followed by auditory stimulation using two tones (tone 1, 3 kHz; tone 2, 4 kHz; duration, 20 s; interstimulus interval, 120 s; Fig.…”

Functional Organisation of the Mouse Superior Colliculus

“…V1 innervates the sensory-related SC, including the optic layer, and activation of these terminals in SC (Liang et al, 2015) or of SC neurons postsynaptic to them (Zingg et al, 2017) induces arrest, while inhibition of V1 impairs arrest to light flashes (Liang et al, 2015). By contrast, while inhibition of primary auditory cortex also impairs sound-induced arrest (Li et al, 2021), the A1 projection to SC does not innervate the optic layer (Benavidez et al, 2021), and inhibition of SC does not impair these sound-induced arrest behaviours.…”