今天无聊看了些咨询，不过倒是读了一个挺有意思的文章，是 Nature Feb 10 Title：Functional identification of an aggression locus in the mouse hypothalamus。 大意说的是小鼠负责攻击性和交配的神经元可能是部分重叠，但又有distinct subpopulation。“Neurons activated during attack are inhibited during mating, suggesting a potential neural substrate for competition between these opponent social behaviors.” 引申一下就是说对小鼠来说性可能会化解暴力，这在人类身上也可能适用。 当时大学不知道是上什么课的时候听到了美国的这么一句话- Make love not war .说的是美国60年代反文化运动的时候，年轻人对老美针对越战提出的看法。现在看看，真是简洁，给力，生动，具体。想想现在埃及的局势，虽然还没有说到战争的地步，不过也是乱的一团糟，不知道穆巴拉克如果看到nature这篇文章，想到Make love not war，我觉得如果他以这个作为宣传口号的话，有可能还会对局势有一些缓解（如果真是这样那一切就简单了）。 说到埃及，早上看同学分享的奥巴马关于埃及的演讲，他用的是“The spirit of peaceful protest and the perseverance that the Egypt people have shown can serve as a powful wind at the back of this change. The united state will continue to be a friend and a partner to Egypt. We stand ready for whatever assistance necessary. And ask for to pursue a credible transition to democracy.”（不一定听得全对）也就是和平过渡，但每天CNN上面报到的死亡人数，似乎告诉我情况并不太平。 政治太复杂，这个是我和我们楼里一个老美（真挺老的）聊天的时候最后达成的共识。 首先各种因素牵涉其中，局外人很难分清什么才是真正的动机，甚至局内人可能也会因为事件的复杂以及各种机遇的出现而变更最初的想法，并且最终获利。 其次作为大众，获得信息的渠道是在是太有限了，CNN已经是投机倒把，BBC还算是在追求unbias的媒体，twitter虽然真实但是太零散，很容易让一个疯狂转载了1万次的状态放大了真实的情况。 还有，现在信息量太大，各个媒体为了追求自身利益而采取“修辞手段”，“独特视角”来诠释同一个问题，很容易让人产生迷惑，到底事情的真相是什么呢？很难知道。Wikileaks就是一个典型。 所以有的时候觉得搞科研还是挺幸福的。同样是对问题的好奇，政治你需要太多的人脉，资金，精力才可以介入，而科学主要需有一个好的实验室，和一个爱思考的大脑，就不妨碍你的信马由缰。相比生物，限制更少的还要算是数学和计算机，只要一个PC，同时身在中国，就可以任意发挥了（羡慕你们）。可惜已经选了生物这个不归路，只能这样走下去。希望未来还能有好奇心，开心点把科研搞好。 对文章感兴趣的同学可以看： Nature doi:10.1038/nature09736 Functional identification of an aggression locus in the mouse hypothalamus Dayu Lin1, 2 Maureen P. Boyle3 Piotr Dollar4 Hyosang Lee1 E. S. Lein3 Pietro Perona4 David J. Anderson1, 2 Electrical stimulation of certain hypothalamic regions in cats and rodents can elicit attack behaviour, but the exact location of relevant cells within these regions, their requirement for naturally occurring aggression and their relationship to mating circuits have not been clear. Genetic methods for neural circuit manipulation in mice provide a potentially powerful approach to this problem, but brain-stimulation-evoked aggression has never been demonstrated in this species. Here we show that optogenetic, but not electrical, stimulation of neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus, ventrolateral subdivision (VMHvl) causes male mice to attack both females and inanimate objects, as well as males. Pharmacogenetic silencing of VMHvl reversibly inhibits inter-male aggression. Immediate early gene analysis and single unit recordings from VMHvl during social interactions reveal overlapping but distinct neuronal subpopulations involved in fighting and mating. Neurons activated during attack are inhibited during mating, suggesting a potential neural substrate for competition between these opponent social behaviours.
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