Paraventricular Thalamus balances reward seeking with the risk of predation

ENGELKE, DOUGLAS; TERSIAN, ANA; FERNANDEZ LEON, JOSE A.; DO MONTE, FABRICIO

Berlin

Conferencia; The 11th FENS Forum of Neuroscience; 2018

Federation of European Neuroscience Societies

Animals must balance the need to seek food with the risk of being attacked by a predator to survive in nature. Although much is known about the brain mechanisms modulating food seeking and fear separately, it remains unknown which neural circuits integrate both responses. Neurons in the paraventricular thalamus (PVT) change their activity during the presentation of both food- and fear-associated cues, making this region a strong candidate to regulate reward and fear responses. To understand the role of PVT in the competition between fear and food-seeking behavior, male Long-Evans rats were initially trained to press a bar for sucrose in the presence of a cue-tone. A predator cue (cat odor) was used to induce innate fear responses. Rats exposed to cat odor alone showed robust defensive behaviors (e.g., avoidance, freezing) and increased activity in PVT neurons, when compared to neutral odor controls (p