Adolescent and Adult Outcomes of Early Life Lactroncrine Programming of Temperament: Neuroenergetics and Social Behavior

我们是谁——我们一生中的行为、生理和健康——都受到我们早期生活的强烈影响。数十年来对动物分类群的实验研究和对人类的流行病学研究表明，子宫内的营养和出生后的行为护理对发育中的年轻人很有帮助。母乳维持婴儿的生长、发育和行为活动，但人们对母乳对后代大脑和行为的影响知之甚少，尤其是在青春期和成年期断奶后。重要的是，母乳是食物、药物和荷尔蒙的信号。该项目将研究婴儿时期摄入的母乳如何通过早期生活中的编程行为影响青少年和成年期的神经生物学和社会行为。关于母乳如何塑造后代的纵向、跨学科研究，不仅解决了动物行为中的关键理论问题，而且对婴儿营养、临床建议和人类福祉具有重要意义。这些知识将为母亲决定母乳喂养的开始和持续时间提供信息，改善替代和补充配方奶粉成分，影响生命早期的临床干预措施，并可以形成体制政策（例如育儿假）。比较哺乳实验室的研究人员为本科生、研究生和博士后学员创造了研究机会，特别是通过PRISE（科学与工程研究计划）和HGWISE（哈佛大学科学与工程研究生女性）的少数族裔项目。研究结果将通过“哺乳动物真差劲……这是一个面向临床和非专业读者的博客，以及在K-12教室、自然历史博物馆和科学中心举办的科学推广讲座。该研究将解决恒河猴（Macaca mulatta）的两个关键问题：1)早期生活营养和通过母乳传递的激素信号如何影响社会行为，特别是社会网络、交配和从青春期到成年期的母亲行为；2)这些行为影响如何通过婴儿期的气质和神经生物学组织来调节。神经生物学（PET和MRI）和行为研究乳泌素规划，包括营养和激素，需要在长寿，社会复杂，单胎饲养的分类群。该项目提供了一个无与伦比的、短暂的机会，可以前瞻性地评估青少年和成年恒河猴的神经生物学和行为结果，这些恒河猴在婴儿时期进行了深入研究，包括对它们母亲产的奶进行系统分析。早期生活经历与神经生物学、行为表型和适应性结果的纵向整合解决了母体效应和发育规划的基本方面，并促进了对选择如何塑造母体投资策略和后代后果的理解。拟议研究产生的结果将通过开放获取出版物传播给学术和临床界，数据将通过在线Dryad数据存储库进行搜索、可用和引用。

Who we are- our behavior, physiology, and health throughout our lives- is strongly influenced by our early life. Decades of experimental research in animal taxa and epidemiological studies of humans have demonstrated that nutrition in the womb and behavioral care after birth are instrumental for the developing young. Mother's milk sustains infant growth, development, and behavioral activity, but little is known about the effects of milk on offspring brain and behavior, especially after weaning during adolescence and adulthood. Importantly, mother's milk is food, medicine, and hormonal signal. This project will investigate how mother's milk ingested in infancy influences neurobiology and social behavior in adolescence and adulthood by programming behavior during early life. Longitudinal, interdisciplinary research on how mother's milk shapes offspring, not only addresses key theoretical questions in animal behavior, but has important implications for infant nutrition, clinical recommendations, and human well-being. Such knowledge will inform maternal decisions about breast-feeding initiation and duration, improve replacement and supplemental formula compositions, influence clinical interventions during early life, and can shape institutional policy (e.g. parental leave). Researchers in the Comparative Lactation Lab create research opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral trainees, particularly through minority tracks of the PRISE (Program for Research in Science & Engineering) and HGWISE (Harvard Graduate Women in Science and Engineering). The results will be communicated to the general public through "Mammals Suck... Milk!" a blog written accessibly for clinical and lay audiences, as well as science outreach lectures in K-12 classrooms, natural history museums, and science centers. The study will address two key questions in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta): 1) How does early life nutrition and hormonal signaling via mother's milk affect social behavior, particularly social networks, mating, and maternal behavior during transitions from adolescence to adulthood and 2) How are these behavioral effects mediated through the organization of temperament and neurobiology during infancy. Neurobiological (PET and MRI) and behavioral investigations of lactocrine programming, both nutritional and hormonal, are needed in long-lived, socially-complex, singleton-rearing taxa. This project provides an unparalleled and ephemeral opportunity to prospectively assess neurobiological and behavioral outcomes in a targeted cohort of adolescent and adult rhesus monkeys that were intensively studied as infants, including systematic analysis of the milk their mothers produced. Longitudinal integration of early life experiences with neurobiology, behavioral phenotype, and fitness outcomes addresses fundamental aspects of maternal effects and developmental programming and advances an understanding of how selection has shaped maternal investment strategies and consequences for offspring. Results generated from the proposed research will be disseminated to the scholarly and clinical community via open access publication and data will be made searchable, available, and citable through the online Dryad Data Repository.