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Scalable control of mounting and attack by Esr1+ neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus

Overview of attention for article published in Nature, April 2014
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (98th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (68th percentile)

Mentioned by

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4 news outlets
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6 blogs
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22 X users
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3 patents
wikipedia
2 Wikipedia pages

Citations

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387 Dimensions

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mendeley
547 Mendeley
Title
Scalable control of mounting and attack by Esr1+ neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus
Published in
Nature, April 2014
DOI 10.1038/nature13169
Pubmed ID
Authors

Hyosang Lee, Dong-Wook Kim, Ryan Remedios, Todd E. Anthony, Angela Chang, Linda Madisen, Hongkui Zeng, David J. Anderson

Abstract

Social behaviours, such as aggression or mating, proceed through a series of appetitive and consummatory phases that are associated with increasing levels of arousal. How such escalation is encoded in the brain, and linked to behavioural action selection, remains an unsolved problem in neuroscience. The ventrolateral subdivision of the murine ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) contains neurons whose activity increases during male-male and male-female social encounters. Non-cell-type-specific optogenetic activation of this region elicited attack behaviour, but not mounting. We have identified a subset of VMHvl neurons marked by the oestrogen receptor 1 (Esr1), and investigated their role in male social behaviour. Optogenetic manipulations indicated that Esr1(+) (but not Esr1(-)) neurons are sufficient to initiate attack, and that their activity is continuously required during ongoing agonistic behaviour. Surprisingly, weaker optogenetic activation of these neurons promoted mounting behaviour, rather than attack, towards both males and females, as well as sniffing and close investigation. Increasing photostimulation intensity could promote a transition from close investigation and mounting to attack, within a single social encounter. Importantly, time-resolved optogenetic inhibition experiments revealed requirements for Esr1(+) neurons in both the appetitive (investigative) and the consummatory phases of social interactions. Combined optogenetic activation and calcium imaging experiments in vitro, as well as c-Fos analysis in vivo, indicated that increasing photostimulation intensity increases both the number of active neurons and the average level of activity per neuron. These data suggest that Esr1(+) neurons in VMHvl control the progression of a social encounter from its appetitive through its consummatory phases, in a scalable manner that reflects the number or type of active neurons in the population.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 547 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 5 <1%
Japan 5 <1%
United Kingdom 3 <1%
China 3 <1%
Hungary 1 <1%
Austria 1 <1%
Korea, Republic of 1 <1%
Unknown 528 97%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 143 26%
Researcher 94 17%
Student > Bachelor 68 12%
Student > Master 61 11%
Student > Doctoral Student 31 6%
Other 71 13%
Unknown 79 14%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 188 34%
Neuroscience 165 30%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 31 6%
Medicine and Dentistry 26 5%
Psychology 24 4%
Other 22 4%
Unknown 91 17%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 86. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 11 August 2023.
All research outputs
#465,156
of 24,359,979 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#21,591
of 94,867 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#3,751
of 207,768 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#319
of 1,005 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,359,979 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 94,867 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 101.6. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 207,768 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 1,005 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 68% of its contemporaries.