Hormonal regulation of sensory processing during parental care

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Does the way we hear sounds change when we become parents? This proposal will causally test if hormones involved in parental behavior affect the neural circuitry underlying offspring auditory cue processing in parents. It has long been known that offspring sensory cues, such as baby cries, elicit the necessary and appropriate behavioral responses from parents. How these sounds are encoded by the brain to elicit behavioral responses is not well understood. Men and women with postpartum mood disorders (PPMD) show lower neural responses to infant cries and subsequently display less or impaired parental behavior, leading to adverse child health and economical outcomes. Understanding how parental brain circuits are able to detect and respond to offspring sensory cues during a specific window of time (i.e., parenting) is imperative for developing novel interventions to effectively treat the unique impairments associated with PPMDs. Hormones play a crucial role in regulating parental behavior. However, we know little about how hormones affect the perception of sensory information from offspring. This proposal will test the hypothesis that prolactin, a hormone involved in both maternal and paternal behavior, interacts with auditory circuits to alter the sensory processing of offspring cues, in order to elicit parental behavior. Leveraging my expertise in prolactin’s role in parental care, I aim to gain new research skills to record and manipulate sensory neurons, which will facilitate the development of new approaches and directions of investigation for my research career. During the K99 phase I will use in vivo high-density electrophysiology to determine the patterns of neural responses to begging calls across the developmental period. I will then use in vivo optogenetics to manipulate auditory responses in order to establish causality of auditory processing on parental behavior. During the R00 phase, I will use these methods in combination with pharmacological manipulations of prolactin signaling to test the hypothesis that prolactin modulates these neural responses to offspring auditory cues in order to elicit appropriate parental behaviors. This research will serve as a launching point to develop a larger research program that investigates how multiple sensory systems (e.g., visual, somatosensory) interact together with the neuroendocrine system to regulate parental care. Investigations into the factors, networks, and cell-types that regulate parental auditory responsiveness in healthy parents will give the necessary insights into how these deficits can be ameliorated in parents with postpartum mood disorders.