Stimulation of medial amygdala GABA neurons with kinetically different channelrhodopsins yields opposite behavioral outcomes

The medial amygdala (MeA) receives pheromone information about conspecifics and has crucial functions in social behaviors. A previous study showed that activation of GABA neurons in the postero-dorsal MeA (MeApd) with channelrhodopsin-2 H134R (ChR2) stimulates inter-male aggression. When performing these experiments using the faster channelrhodopsin H134R,E123T (ChETA), we find the opposite behavioral outcome. A systematic comparison between the two channelrhodopsin variants reveals that optogenetic activation of MeApd GABA neurons with ChETA suppresses aggression, whereas activation under ChR2 increases aggression. Although the mechanism for this paradoxical difference is not understood, we observe that activation of MeApd GABA neurons with ChR2 causes larger plateau depolarizations, smaller action potentials, and larger local inhibition than with ChETA. Thus, the channelrhodopsin variant used for in vivo optogenetic experiments can radically influence the behavioral outcome. Future work should continue to study the role of specific sub-populations of MeApd GABA neurons in aggression control.