Contributions of changes in neuroendocrine pathways to ingestive and maternal behavior in rats

怀孕和哺乳给雌性哺乳动物带来了大量的代谢和行为挑战。雌性应对这些挑战的能力将决定其幼崽的生存和发育情况。这项研究计划的一个主要目标是使用动物模型来识别导致怀孕和哺乳期雌性大脑变化的关键荷尔蒙和经验变量，这并不令人惊讶，一些大脑区域发生了相当戏剧性的变化，这些变化促进了雌性动物应对母亲的需求。我们的研究还调查了这种变化的功能意义。这些研究在两个方面很重要：1)物种之间有足够的重叠，因此在老鼠身上的研究结果可能适用于许多物种，包括人类；2)这些研究让我们了解大脑的可塑性有多大，以及诱导神经可塑性的途径。

Pregnancy and lactation present female mammals with a large array of both metabolic and behavioral challenges. The female's ability to meet these challenges will determine how well her young survive and develop.  Not surprising there are quite dramatic changes in some brain areas that facilitate the females' ability to cope with  the demands of motherhood, A major goal of this research program is to use an animal model to identify the critical hormonal and experiential variables that induce changes in the brains of pregnant and lactating females. Our studies also investigate the functional significance of such changes.  These studies are important in two ways: 1) there is sufficient overlap between species that  the results from studies in rats may be applicable across a number of species, including humans 2) these studies allow us to understand how malleable the brain is and the pathways through which neural plasticity can be induced.