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Should I mate or should I go: cyclical control of female rejection behavior
Cyclic fluctuations in sex hormone levels intricately coordinate female sexual behavior with reproductive capacity, notably demonstrated in rodents where females only accept copulation attempts during their fertile phase. Outside this window, copulation is not only hindered by low receptivity but also actively rejected. Despite extensive research on female receptivity, rejection behavior has been largely overlooked, often dismissed as a lack of receptivity. Here I will describe a novel circuit dedicated to the cyclical control of rejection behavior situated in the ventromedial hypothalamus. Our findings suggest that a female’s sexual response to copulation attempts throughout the reproductive cycle arises from two distinct processes: receptivity and rejection. These processes are governed by separate and spatially segregated hypothalamic populations, whose activity is modulated by the reproductive cycle in a bidirectional and opposing manner.
Date:
16 April 2024, 12:00
Venue:
Sherrington Building, off Parks Road OX1 3PT
Venue Details:
Sherrington Library
Speaker:
Susana Lima (Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal)
Organising department:
Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (DPAG)
Organiser:
Fiona Woods (University of Oxford, Department of Physiology Anatomy and Genetics, Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour)
Organiser contact email address:
fiona.woods@cncb.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
CNCB Seminar Series
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Fiona Woods
