Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: In natural environments, animals rarely feed continuously to satiation; instead, feeding occurs in brief bouts separated by pauses. This fragmentation is thought to balance internal drives with external demands, yet its underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. By combining bidirectional neural activity mapping and behavioral phenotyping, we identify a projection from the dorsal subiculum (dSub) of the hippocampus to the mammillary body (MB) as a key regulator of this fragmentation. Activity along the dSub-MB pathway tracks and gates the duration of individual feeding bouts, independent of homeostatic state. A simple bistable attractor model captures both dSub-MB neural dynamics and associated behaviors across optogenetic and behavioral perturbations. Together, these findings identify a top-down circuit mechanism that implements action selection in a naturalistic setting.
Authors: Tianbo Qi, Colton Krull, Verina H. Leung, Vlad Mardare, Dong Yang, Neeraj Lal, Jingrui Ma, Shiqi Wang, Hanbing Shen, Alan Zhang, Bohan Zhao, Saba Heydari Seradj, Tatiana Korotkova, Ann Kennedy, Li Ye
Language: English
Subfield: Endocrine and Autonomic Systems
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7148854475
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