Balancing food seeking with the risk of predation recruits the paraventricular thalamus

ENGELKE, DOUGLAS; FERNANDEZ LEON, JOSE A.; TERSIAN, ANA; NAIM-RASHEED, MARIA; DO MONTE, FABRICIO

San Diego, California

Conferencia; 2018 SfN Neuroscience; 2018

Society for Neuroscience

The ability to survive in nature depends on a balance between foraging and the risk of being attacked by a predator. Although the brain mechanisms modulating food seeking and fear have been extensively studied apart, it remains unknown which neural circuits integrate both behaviors. Neurons in the paraventricular thalamus (PVT) change their activities during the presentation of both food and fear-associated cues, making this region a strong candidate to regulate reward and fear responses. To investigate whether PVT is involved in the competition between fear and food-seeking behavior, male and female Long-Evans adult rats were initially trained to press a bar for sucrose in the presence of cues (reward cues). Cat saliva was used to induce innate fear responses (predator odor). Rats exposed to predator odor alone showed stronger defensive behaviors characterized by increased freezing and avoidance responses, when compared to neutral odor controls (Freezing, neutral= 1.8% vs. predator odor= 38.1%, p 2.54 for excitatory and < -1.96 for inhibitory responses). During a competition test, when predator odor and reward cues were simultaneously presented, excitatory responses observed during the reward cues were abolished. This neuronal change was associated with a dramatic reduction in food-seeking behavior (presses/min: neutral= 19.1 vs. predator odor= 1.5, p