Neural Circuitry and Plasticity for Maternal Behavior

母亲行为的神经回路和可塑性

• 批准号: 9308448
• 负责人: Robert Crooks Froemke
• 金额: $ 40.3万
• 依托单位: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-04-01 至 2022-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9308448
• 关键词: Affect; Animals; Antibodies; Area; Auditory; Auditory area; Axon; Behavior; Behavioral; Biological; Brain; Caregivers; Caring; Cells; Child; Child Abuse and Neglect; Child Development; Child Rearing; Childbirth; Clinical Research; Crying; Cues; Data; Distress; Educational Intervention; Electrophysiology (science); Female; Goals; Home environment; Hormones; Housing; Human; Hypothalamic structure; Image; Infant; Infant Care; Lactation; Left; Libraries; Maternal Behavior; Measures; Mothers; Mus; Neuronal Plasticity; Neurons; Neurosciences; Neurosecretory Systems; Oxytocin; Oxytocin Receptor; Pair Bond; Parent-Child Relations; Parents; Patients; Peptides; Pharmacology Study; Physiological; Postpartum Depression; Postpartum Period; Psyche structure; Retrieval; Sensory; Shapes; Signal Transduction; Social Behavior; Social Interaction; Stimulus; Synapses; Synaptic plasticity; System; Testing; Therapeutic; Therapeutic Agents; Training Programs; Ultrasonics; Whole-Cell Recordings; Work; auditory processing; autism spectrum disorder; awake; base; behavioral response; behavioral study; child neglect; experience; experimental study; improved; in vivo; information processing; neglect; neural circuit; neurobehavioral; neuroregulation; offspring; optogenetics; paraventricular nucleus; peptide hormone; pup; receptor; relating to nervous system; response; sensory input; social; social anxiety; social cognition; sound; success; treatment strategy; two-photon; vocalization

Maternal care of offspring requires rapid neurobehavioral changes, including plasticity within circuits specialized for processing infant cues such as crying. Neuroendocrine signals are important for neuroplasticity, including release of the peptide hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin is released from the hypothalamus and is important for childbirth and lactation. Oxytocin also acts in the brain where it is believed to increase the salience of social information, enhancing pair bonding and maternal behavior. Clinical studies suggest that oxytocin is a promising therapeutic agent, with patients sometimes engaging more successfully in social interactions. There is a high rate of child maltreatment and neglect, but training programs and interventions that teach parents to detect and respond to social signals have had some success. These therapies would benefit from understanding the interactions between infant social cues, oxytocin modulation, and neuroplasticity relevant for maternal behaviors. In this proposal, we will study the neural circuitry, plasticity, and behavioral effects of oxytocin in the context of maternal behavior in mice. We study neurobehavioral responses to infant ultrasonic vocalizations by maternal caregivers, which requires experience with pups and is facilitated by oxytocin. We will study the sequence of auditory-based maternal behaviors first expressed by pup-naïve females co-housed with mothers and pups. The central hypothesis is that social contact with dam or pups releases oxytocin, interacting with pup calls to induce plasticity in auditory cortex. We will use in vivo recording and imaging, combined with behavior and optogenetics to examine how cortex is modified by oxytocin and pup call sounds, building on our past work on cortical plasticity and modulation. In Aim 1 we measure activity in auditory cortex during co-housing, relating retrieval behavior to cortical plasticity. In Aim 2, we examine the how oxytocin modulates excitatory and inhibitory cells and synapses for processing auditory social signals. Finally in Aim 3 we ask how oxytocin is appropriately released by infant cues, to initiate these auditory cortical changes and shape maternal behavior in newly- maternal mice. In summary, here we will use behavioral experiments combined with optogenetics and in vivo recordings to ask how oxytocin is released and affects auditory cortex, to enable maternal recognition of infant distress calls. These experiments will provide fundamental and urgently-needed data on the neural circuitry and functional consequences of oxytocin signaling in the mammalian brain, in the context of a deep and long-standing question in neuroscience: how are specific neural circuits specialized for sensory processing and maternal behavior?

母亲照顾后代需要快速的神经行为改变，包括专门回路的可塑性