Despite how widespread female aggression is across the animal kingdom, there remains much unknown about its neuroendocrine mechanisms, especially in females that engage in aggression outside the peripartum period. Although the impact of aggressive experience on steroid hormone responses have been described, little is known about the impact of these experiences on female behavior or the subsequent neuropeptide responses to performing aggression. In this study, we compared behavioral responses in both male and female adult California mice based on if they had 0, 1, or 3 aggressive encounters using a resident intruder paradigm. We measured how arginine vasopressin and oxytocin cells in the paraventricular nucleus responded to aggression using c-fos immunohistochemistry. We saw that both sexes disengaged from intruders with repeated aggressive encounters, but that on the final day of testing females were more likely to freeze when they encountered intruders compared to no aggression controls – which was not significant in males. Finally, we saw that percent of arginine vasopressin and c-fos co-localizations in the posterior region of the paraventricular nucleus increased in males who fought compared to no aggression controls. No difference was observed in females. Overall, there is evidence that engaging in aggression induces stress responses in both sexes, and that females may be more sensitive to the effects of fighting.

中文翻译：

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加州小鼠对攻击性遭遇反应的性别差异

尽管雌性攻击行为在整个动物界非常普遍，但其神经内分泌机制仍知之甚少，尤其是在围产期以外进行攻击行为的雌性。尽管攻击性经历对类固醇激素反应的影响已经被描述，但人们对这些经历对女性行为或随后的神经肽对攻击性反应的影响知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们根据雄性和雌性成年加州小鼠是否使用常驻入侵者范例进行了 0、1 或 3 次攻击性遭遇，比较了它们的行为反应。我们使用 c-fos 免疫组织化学测量了室旁核中的精氨酸加压素和催产素细胞如何响应攻击。我们发现，在反复发生攻击性遭遇时，雌性和雌性都会脱离入侵者，但在测试的最后一天，与没有攻击性的对照组相比，雌性在遇到入侵者时更有可能僵住——这对雄性来说并不显着。最后，我们发现，与没有攻击行为的对照组相比，进行战斗的男性室旁核后部区域的精氨酸加压素和 c-fos 共定位的百分比有所增加。在女性中没有观察到差异。总体而言，有证据表明，攻击行为会引起两性的压力反应，并且女性可能对战斗的影响更敏感。