Horrell Nathan D, Hickmott Peter W, Saltzman Wendy
Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA.
Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA.
Curr Top Behav Neurosci. 2019;43:111-160. doi: 10.1007/7854_2018_55.
Across the animal kingdom, parents in many species devote extraordinary effort toward caring for offspring, often risking their lives and exhausting limited resources. Understanding how the brain orchestrates parental care, biasing effort over the many competing demands, is an important topic in social neuroscience. In mammals, maternal care is necessary for offspring survival and is largely mediated by changes in hormones and neuropeptides that fluctuate massively during pregnancy, parturition, and lactation (e.g., progesterone, estradiol, oxytocin, and prolactin). In the relatively small number of mammalian species in which parental care by fathers enhances offspring survival and development, males also undergo endocrine changes concurrent with birth of their offspring, but on a smaller scale than females. Thus, fathers additionally rely on sensory signals from their mates, environment, and/or offspring to orchestrate paternal behavior. Males can engage in a variety of infant-directed behaviors that range from infanticide to avoidance to care; in many species, males can display all three behaviors in their lifetime. The neural plasticity that underlies such stark changes in behavior is not well understood. In this chapter we summarize current data on the neural circuitry that has been proposed to underlie paternal care in mammals, as well as sensory, neuroendocrine, and experiential influences on paternal behavior and on the underlying circuitry. We highlight some of the gaps in our current knowledge of this system and propose future directions that will enable the development of a more comprehensive understanding of the proximate control of parenting by fathers.
在整个动物界，许多物种的父母都为照顾后代付出了非凡的努力，常常冒着生命危险，耗尽有限的资源。了解大脑如何协调亲代抚育行为，在众多相互竞争的需求中偏向投入精力，是社会神经科学中的一个重要课题。在哺乳动物中，母性抚育对后代的生存至关重要，并且在很大程度上由孕期、分娩期和哺乳期大幅波动的激素和神经肽的变化介导（例如，孕酮、雌二醇、催产素和催乳素）。在相对少数的哺乳动物物种中，父性抚育会提高后代的生存和发育几率，雄性在后代出生时也会经历内分泌变化，但程度比雌性小。因此，雄性还依赖来自配偶、环境和/或后代的感官信号来协调父性行为。雄性可以表现出从杀婴到回避再到照顾等各种针对幼崽的行为；在许多物种中，雄性在其一生中可以表现出这三种行为。对于这种行为的明显变化背后的神经可塑性，我们还了解得不够透彻。在本章中，我们总结了目前关于哺乳动物中被认为是父性抚育基础的神经回路的数据，以及感官因素、神经内分泌因素和经验对父性行为及其潜在神经回路的影响。我们强调了目前我们对该系统认识中的一些空白，并提出了未来的研究方向，这些方向将有助于更全面地理解父亲育儿行为的近端控制机制。
