Summary: A new study reveals how evolution fine-tunes instinctive fear responses by tweaking a key neural switch deep in the brain. Comparing two deer-mouse species, researchers found that forest-dwelling mice have hypersensitive escape circuits, while open-field mice are more likely to freeze.
This difference is traced to the dorsal periaqueductal gray (dPAG), a brain hub for defensive actions, which is more easily triggered in forest mice. The findings show how natural selection adapts survival behaviors by adjusting existing brain pathways rather than building new ones.
Key Facts:
- Neural Switch Identified: dPAG sensitivity controls flee-or-freeze instinct.
- Species Difference: Forest mice escape faster; open-field mice freeze more often.
- Evolutionary Insight: Behaviors are fine-tuned by adjusting central circuits, not sensory input.
Source: VIB
Researchers have identified a key neural switch that controls whether animals instinctively flee from a threat or freeze in place. By comparing two closely related deer-mouse species, they found that this switch is calibrated by evolution to match the animal’s habitat.
This neural circuit is hypersensitive in mice living in densely vegetated environments, causing instant escape, but less responsive in their open-field cousins, who are more likely to freeze. In doing so, the research team uncovered an important way in which evolution fine-tunes the brain for survival.
Flee or freeze?
In nature, survival hinges on making the right split-second choice when danger strikes, and the brain’s defensive circuits are built for exactly that task. Yet what counts as the “right” response depends on the landscape: in cluttered woods, swift flight into the underbrush can save your life; on exposed grassland, motionless hiding buys time. How does evolution solve this puzzle?
In a new study published in Nature, an international research team from Belgium and the USA has uncovered an elegant mechanism that, by tweaking the sensitivity of a danger-response hub in the brain, tailors behavior to each environment without redesigning the whole system.
Forest mice vs open-field mice
When a shadow of a potential predator looms overhead, forest mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) dash for cover, while their open-field cousins (Peromyscus polionotus) freeze in place. The researchers set out to pinpoint the brain switch that sets those opposite instincts.
“To precisely measure escape behavior, we presented both types of mice with stimuli that resembled an aerial predator in a controlled environment,” explains Felix Baier, co-first author and part of the research team at Harvard.
“We found that open-field mice required roughly twice the stimulus intensity to trigger escape compared with their forest relatives, indicating a substantial difference in how they processed the threat stimulus.”
A switch in the brain
Using cutting-edge neural recordings with Neuropixels probes and manipulation techniques, the researchers traced these behavioral differences to a central command hub for escape actions: the dorsal periaqueductal gray (dPAG), a group of neurons deep in the brain.
“We were surprised to find that evolution acted in a central brain region, downstream of peripheral sensory perception, because for evolution to change a behavior, it has often been thought that the easiest and most efficient way would be to just change the sensory inputs,” says Baier.
Both species perceive the looming threat identically as evidenced by comparable responses along the circuit from the eye to the dPAG when the animals saw the stimulus without reacting to it. However, the activation of the dPAG differed significantly in the case where the mice escaped from the threat.
“Our monitoring of neural activity revealed a stark contrast: in forest deer mice, escaping from a potential threat in the sky is enabled by an instant ‘run’ command in the dPAG, whereas the dPAG of its open field cousin does not send any such commands.
“This divergence can be understood as an evolutionary repurposing of neural circuits to finetune survival response,” says Katja Reinhard, who is the other co-first author and a former postdoc at NERF (part of imec, KU Leuven and VIB), now leading her own group at SISSA, Italy.
Further, by using advanced methods that let scientists activate or silence specific brain regions, the team demonstrated a causal connection. Artificially stimulating dPAG neurons in forest mice made them escape even in the absence of a threat. Conversely, using chemical methods to dampen dPAG activity raised their escape threshold, making their behavior more like that of their cousins.
Built-in flexibility
The study not only sheds light on how instinctive behaviors like freezing or fleeing are controlled but also underscores the flexibility of the brain’s internal architecture, explain lead authors Prof. Karl Farrow (imec, KU Leuven, VIB) and Prof. Hopi Hoekstra (Harvard).
Farrow: “By comparing these two related species we uncovered a switch that balances freeze versus flight, showing how natural selection fine-tunes behavior without rewiring the senses.”
Hoekstra: “Our new discovery illustrates a fundamental evolutionary principle: natural selection often tweaks existing neural circuits rather than constructing entirely new pathways.”
Funding
The research team at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain and Disease Research was financially supported by the HHMI International Student Research Fellowship, the Grant-in-Aid of the American Society of Mammalogy, the Herchel Smith Graduate Fellowship, the Robert A. Chapman Memorial Scholarship, the Joan Brockman Williamson Fellowship, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fund, FWO, ERC, the Harvard PRISE fellowship, the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology grant for undergraduate research, the NIH, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
About this evolutionary neuroscience research news
Author: Joran Lauwers
Source: VIB
Contact: Joran Lauwers – VIB
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“The neural basis of species-specific defensive behaviour in Peromyscus mice” by Katja Reinhard et al. Nature
Abstract
The neural basis of species-specific defensive behaviour in Peromyscus mice
Evading imminent threat from predators is critical for animal survival. Effective defensive strategies can vary, even between closely related species. However, the neural basis of such species-specific behaviours remains poorly understood.
Here we find that two sister species of deer mice (genus Peromyscus) show different responses to the same looming stimulus: Peromyscus maniculatus, which occupies densely vegetated habitats, predominantly escapes, whereas the open field specialist, Peromyscus polionotus, briefly freezes.
This difference arises from species-specific escape thresholds, is largely context-independent, and can be triggered by both visual and auditory threat stimuli.
Using immunohistochemistry and electrophysiological recordings, we find that although visual threat activates the superior colliculus in both species, the role of the dorsal periaqueductal grey (dPAG) in driving behaviour differs.
Whereas dPAG activity scales with running speed in P. maniculatus, neural activity in the dPAG of P. polionotus correlates poorly with movement, including during visually triggered escape.
Moreover, optogenetic activation of dPAG neurons elicits acceleration in P. maniculatus but not in P. polionotus, and their chemogenetic inhibition during a looming stimulus delays escape onset in P. maniculatus to match that of P. polionotus.
Together, we trace species-specific escape thresholds to a central circuit node, downstream of peripheral sensory neurons, localizing an ecologically relevant behavioural difference to a specific region of the mammalian brain.
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