Department of Neurobiology, The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
Department of Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Neuron. 2020 Aug 5;107(3):566-579.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.05.004. Epub 2020 May 29.
Mother-infant bonding develops rapidly following parturition and is accompanied by changes in sensory perception and behavior. Here, we study how ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are represented in the brain of mothers. Using a mouse line that allows temporally controlled genetic access to active neurons, we find that the temporal association cortex (TeA) in mothers exhibits robust USV responses. Rabies tracing from USV-responsive neurons reveals extensive subcortical and cortical inputs into TeA. A particularly dominant cortical source of inputs is the primary auditory cortex (A1), suggesting strong A1-to-TeA connectivity. Chemogenetic silencing of USV-responsive neurons in TeA impairs auditory-driven maternal preference in a pup-retrieval assay. Furthermore, dense extracellular recordings from awake mice reveal changes of both single-neuron and population responses to USVs in TeA, improving discriminability of pup calls in mothers compared with naive females. These data indicate that TeA plays a key role in encoding and perceiving pup cries during motherhood.
母婴结合在分娩后迅速发展，并伴随着感觉感知和行为的变化。在这里，我们研究了超声波发声（USV）在母亲大脑中的表现。使用一种允许对活跃神经元进行时间控制遗传访问的小鼠系，我们发现母亲的颞联合皮层（TeA）表现出强烈的 USV 反应。来自对 USV 有反应的神经元的狂犬病追踪显示，大量的皮质下和皮质输入到 TeA。输入的一个特别主要的皮质来源是初级听觉皮层（A1），表明 A1 到 TeA 的连接很强。化学遗传沉默 TeA 中的 USV 反应神经元会损害在幼崽回收试验中听觉驱动的母性偏好。此外，来自清醒小鼠的密集细胞外记录显示，在 TeA 中，单个神经元和群体对 USV 的反应都发生了变化，与陌生雌性相比，母亲对幼崽叫声的辨别能力提高了。这些数据表明，TeA 在母性期间编码和感知幼崽哭声方面发挥着关键作用。
