Department of Basic Research on Social Recognition and Memory, Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan; Department of Socioneurosciences, United Graduate School of Child Development, Osaka University, Kanazawa University, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Chiba University and University of Fukui, Kanazawa Campus, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan.
Department of Basic Research on Social Recognition and Memory, Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa 920-8640, Japan; Ruikang Hospital Affiliated to Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning, Guangxi 530011, China.
Horm Behav. 2020 Apr;120:104695. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104695. Epub 2020 Feb 3.
In mammals, the development of healthy offspring requires maternal care. Behavior by lactating mothers toward other individuals is an important component of maternal aggression. However, it is unclear whether fathers display aggression primed by pups (an external factor), and the protection mechanism is poorly understood. To address this question, we examined paternal aggression in the ICR mouse strain. We found that sires exposed to cues from pups and lactating dams showed stronger aggression toward intruders than did sires that were deprived of family cues or exposed to nonlactating mates. c-Fos immunohistochemistry showed that cells in both the paraventricular and supraoptic nuclei (PVN and SON, respectively) in the hypothalamus of sires exposed to any cues were highly activated. However, c-Fos activation in oxytocinergic neurons was increased only in sires exposed to pup cues and solely in the PVN. In Cd38-knockout sires, the presence of pups induced no or reduced parental aggression; however, this phenotype was recovered, that is, aggression increased to the wild-type level, after intraperitoneal administration of oxytocin (OT). Specific c-Fos activation patterns induced by pup cues were not found in the PVN of knockout sires. These results demonstrate that the PVN is one of the primary hypothalamic areas involved in paternal aggression and suggest that a CD38-dependent OT mechanism in oxytocinergic neurons is critical for part of the behavior associated with the protection of offspring by nurturing male mice.
在哺乳动物中，健康后代的发育需要母体的照顾。哺乳期母亲对其他个体的行为是母性攻击的一个重要组成部分。然而，目前尚不清楚父亲是否会表现出由幼崽（外部因素）引发的攻击行为，并且对保护机制也知之甚少。为了解决这个问题，我们检查了 ICR 小鼠品系中的父性攻击行为。我们发现，与被剥夺了家庭线索或暴露于非哺乳期伴侣的雄鼠相比，接触幼崽和哺乳期雌鼠线索的雄鼠对入侵者表现出更强的攻击性。c-Fos 免疫组织化学显示，暴露于任何线索的雄鼠下丘脑的室旁核和视上核（PVN 和 SON）中的细胞均高度激活。然而，仅在暴露于幼崽线索的雄鼠中，催产素能神经元中的 c-Fos 激活增加，而且仅在 PVN 中增加。在 Cd38 敲除雄鼠中，幼崽的存在没有或减少了亲代攻击；然而，在腹腔内给予催产素（OT）后，这种表型得到了恢复，即攻击增加到野生型水平。在敲除雄鼠的 PVN 中没有发现由幼崽线索引起的特定 c-Fos 激活模式。这些结果表明，PVN 是参与父性攻击的主要下丘脑区域之一，并表明依赖于 CD38 的 OT 机制在催产素能神经元中对于与雄性小鼠养育后代相关的部分行为至关重要。
