TY - JOUR T1 - Prefrontal cortical control of a brainstem social behavior circuit JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/073734 SP - 073734 AU - Tamara B. Franklin AU - Bianca A. Silva AU - Zina Perova AU - Livia Marrone AU - Maria E. Masferrer AU - Yang Zhan AU - Angie Kaplan AU - Louise Greetham AU - Violaine Verrechia AU - Andreas Halman AU - Sara Pagella AU - Alexei L. Vyssotski AU - Anna Illarionova AU - Valery Grinevich AU - Tiago Branco AU - Cornelius T. Gross Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/09/073734.abstract N2 - The prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in adjusting an organism’s behavior to its environment. In particular, numerous studies have implicated the prefrontal cortex in the control of social behavior, but the neural circuits that mediate these effects remain unknown. Here we investigated behavioral adaptation to social defeat in mice and uncovered a critical contribution of neural projections from the medial prefrontal cortex to the dorsal periaqueductal grey, a brainstem area vital for defensive responses. Social defeat caused a weakening of functional connectivity between these two areas and selective inhibition of these projections mimicked the behavioral effects of social defeat. These findings define a specific neural projection by which the prefrontal cortex can control and adapt social behavior. ER -