Surviving in the animal kingdom hinges on the ability to fight competitors and to mate with partners. Dedicated neural circuits in the brain allow animals to mate and attack without any prior experience. Classical lesioning and stimulation studies demonstrated that medial hypothalamic and limbic areas are crucial for male sexual and aggressive behaviors. Moreover, recent functional manipulation tools have uncovered neural circuits critical for mating and aggression, and optical and electrophysiological recordings have revealed how socially relevant information (e.g. sex-specific sensory signals, action commands for specific behaviors, mating- and aggression-specific motivational states) is encoded in these circuits. A better understanding of the neural mechanisms of innate social behaviors will provide critical insights to how complex behavioral outputs are coordinated at the circuit level. In this paper, I review these recent studies and discuss the potential circuit logic of male sexual and aggressive behaviors in mice.

在动物王国中生存取决于与竞争对手作战和与伙伴交配的能力。大脑中的专用神经回路允许动物在没有任何经验的情况下交配和攻击。经典的损伤和刺激研究表明，内侧下丘脑和边缘区域对男性的性行为和攻击行为至关重要。此外，最近的功能操作工具揭示了对交配和攻击至关重要的神经回路，光学和电生理记录揭示了与社会相关的信息（例如，特定性别的感觉信号、特定行为的动作命令、交配和攻击特定的动机状态）被编码在这些电路中。更好地理解先天社会行为的神经机制将为复杂的行为输出如何在电路级别协调提供重要见解。在本文中，我回顾了这些最近的研究，并讨论了小鼠雄性性行为和攻击性行为的潜在回路逻辑。