University of California, Davis, Department of Psychology, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616, United States.
University of California, Davis, Department of Psychology, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616, United States.
Front Neuroendocrinol. 2019 Jul;54:100745. doi: 10.1016/j.yfrne.2019.04.002. Epub 2019 Apr 19.
Maternal behavior is a defining characteristic of mammals, which is regulated by a core, conserved neural circuit. However, mothering behavior is not always a default response to infant conspecifics. For example, initial fearful, fragmented or aggressive responses toward infants in laboratory rats and mice can give way to highly motivated and organized caregiving behaviors following appropriate hormone exposure or repeated experience with infants. Therefore hormonal and/or experiential factors must be involved in determining the extent to which infants access central approach and avoidance neural systems. In this review we describe evidence supporting the idea that infant conspecifics are capable of activating distinct neural pathways to elicit avoidant, aggressive and parental responses from adult rodents. Additionally, we discuss the hypothesis that alterations in transcriptional regulation within the medial preoptic area of the hypothalamus may be a key mechanism of neural plasticity involved in programming the differential sensitivity of these neural pathways.
母性行为是哺乳动物的一个重要特征，由一个核心的、保守的神经回路调节。然而，母性行为并不总是对婴儿同种动物的默认反应。例如，实验室大鼠和小鼠最初对婴儿的恐惧、分散或攻击反应，在适当的激素暴露或反复接触婴儿后，可能会转变为高度积极和有组织的照顾行为。因此，激素和/或经验因素必须参与决定婴儿在多大程度上能够接近和回避中枢神经系统。在这篇综述中，我们描述了支持以下观点的证据，即婴儿同种动物能够激活不同的神经通路，引发成年啮齿动物的回避、攻击和父母反应。此外，我们还讨论了这样一种假设，即下丘脑视前内侧区转录调节的改变可能是参与编程这些神经通路差异敏感性的神经可塑性的关键机制。
