Encoding of female mating dynamics by a hypothalamic line attractor.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Endocrinology
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• Female sexual receptivity is hormonally regulated but poorly understood at the neural level.
• The ventrolateral ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) is implicated in controlling female mating behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how neural activity in the VMHvl encodes the dynamics of mating behavior and sexual receptivity in female mice.

Main Methods:

• Unsupervised dynamical system analysis of calcium imaging data from VMHvl neurons during mating.
• Neural perturbations were used to assess the stability of neural population activity.

Main Results:

• A slow ramping activity dimension, forming a line attractor, was identified in VMHvl neural population dynamics.
• This attractor integrated male cues during mating, peaking before ejaculation and correlating positively with receptivity.
• Attractor dynamics were observed to fluctuate across the oestrus cycle and were hormone-dependent.

Conclusions:

• A hypothalamic line attractor may encode a persistent, escalating state of female sexual arousal or drive during mating.
• Hormonal status reversibly modulates these neural attractor dynamics on a timescale of days.