Structural Degradation in Midcingulate Cortex Is Associated with Pathological Aggression in Mice
Publication year
2021Source
Brain Sciences, 11, 7, (2021), pp. 1-13, article 868ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
Cognitive Neuroscience
PI Group Statistical Imaging Neuroscience
PI Group Memory & Emotion
Neuroinformatics
Journal title
Brain Sciences
Volume
vol. 11
Issue
iss. 7
Page start
p. 1
Page end
p. 13
Subject
130 000 Cognitive Neurology & Memory; 220 Statistical Imaging Neuroscience; Neuroinformatics; Radboudumc 13: Stress-related disorders DCMN: Donders Center for Medical Neuroscience; Radboudumc 7: Neurodevelopmental disorders DCMN: Donders Center for Medical NeuroscienceAbstract
Pathological aggression is a debilitating feature of many neuropsychiatric disorders, and cingulate cortex is one of the brain areas centrally implicated in its control. Here we explore the specific role of midcingulate cortex (MCC) in the development of pathological aggression. To this end, we investigated the structural and functional degeneration of MCC in the BALB/cJ strain, a mouse model for pathological aggression. Compared to control animals from the BALB/cByJ strain, BALB/cJ mice expressed consistently heightened levels of aggression, as assessed by the resident-intruder test. At the same time, immunohistochemistry demonstrated stark structural degradation in the MCC of aggressive BALB/cJ mice: Decreased neuron density and widespread neuron death were accompanied by increased microglia and astroglia concentrations and reactive astrogliosis. cFos staining indicated that this degradation had functional consequences: MCC activity did not differ between BALB/cJ and BALB/cByJ mice at baseline, but unlike BALB/cByJ mice, BALB/cJ mice failed to activate MCC during resident-intruder encounters. This suggests that structural and functional impairments of MCC, triggered by neuronal degeneration, may be one of the drivers of pathological aggression in mice, highlighting MCC as a potential key area for pathologies of aggression in humans.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [227437]
- Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging [3564]
- Electronic publications [107154]
- Faculty of Medical Sciences [86157]
- Faculty of Science [33757]
- Open Access publications [76289]
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