Summary: The hypothalamus helps people switch between survival behaviors such as hunting and fleeing. The researchers used AI-enhanced fMRI scans to analyze brain activity in 21 participants playing a survival game.
They found distinct patterns of hypothalamic activity associated with behavioral switching. This discovery highlights the crucial role of the hypothalamus in survival strategies.
Key facts:
- The role of the hypothalamus: Important for switching between hunting and escape behaviors.
- AI and fMRI: Researchers used AI-enhanced fMRI scans to study brain activity.
- Survival strategies: Hypothalamic activity predicts performance in survival tasks.
Source: PLOS
The hypothalamus is a small region of the human brain commonly associated with regulating body temperature, hunger, thirst, fatigue and sleep. But it also has another important role: helping the brain and body switch between different and contrasting survival behaviors, such as hunting prey and escaping predators.
This is the conclusion of a new study published on June 27th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Jaejoong Kim and Dean Mobbs of the California Institute of Technology, USA, and colleagues.
Previous studies in animals have suggested that the hypothalamus is critical in changing behaviors, but it has been unclear whether this is the case in humans. Studying the brain region in humans is challenging because of the small size of the hypothalamus; some of its subregions are below the resolution of typical functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans.
In the new study, researchers developed artificial intelligence-based approaches to optimize and analyze fMRI brain scans of 21 healthy individuals taken over 4-hour periods while the people were engaged in a survival hunt-and-escape game inside the scanner fMRI. Participants had to control an avatar, switching between hunting prey and escaping from a predator.
The researchers built a computational model to explain the differences in movement patterns that characterized hunting behavior compared to escape behavior. Next, they analyzed how changes in movement were related to subtle changes in hypothalamus activity.
Using this approach, the team found that patterns of neural activity in the hypothalamus, as well as nearby brain regions that are directly connected to the hypothalamus, correlate with behavioral change—at least for survival behaviors.
Furthermore, the strength of this hypothalamus signaling could predict how well someone would perform in their next survival task. While the relationship was seen for switching between hunting and escape behaviors, it was not observed for switching between other behaviors.
The authors conclude that the hypothalamus plays a key role in how the human brain switches and coordinates survival behaviors—a function that is important and evolutionarily advantageous.
The authors add, “The new research demonstrates the vital role of the human hypothalamus in the transition between survival behaviors such as hunting and escape, using advanced imaging and computational modeling methods.
“This research also reveals how the hypothalamus interacts with other brain regions to coordinate these survival strategies.”
About this neuroscience research news
Author: Claire Turner
Source: PLOS
Contact: Claire Turner – PLOS
Image: Image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original research: The research will appear in PLOS Biology