Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
Physiol Rev. 2025 Jan 1;105(1):315-381. doi: 10.1152/physrev.00036.2023. Epub 2024 Aug 15.
Parenting behavior comprises a variety of adult-infant and adult-adult interactions across multiple timescales. The state transition from nonparent to parent requires an extensive reorganization of individual priorities and physiology and is facilitated by combinatorial hormone action on specific cell types that are integrated throughout interconnected and brainwide neuronal circuits. In this review, we take a comprehensive approach to integrate historical and current literature on each of these topics across multiple species, with a focus on rodents. New and emerging molecular, circuit-based, and computational technologies have recently been used to address outstanding gaps in our current framework of knowledge on infant-directed behavior. This work is raising fundamental questions about the interplay between instinctive and learned components of parenting and the mutual regulation of affiliative versus agonistic infant-directed behaviors in health and disease. Whenever possible, we point to how these technologies have helped gain novel insights and opened new avenues of research into the neurobiology of parenting. We hope this review will serve as an introduction for those new to the field, a comprehensive resource for those already studying parenting, and a guidepost for designing future studies.
养育行为包括在多个时间尺度上的各种成人-婴儿和成人-成人的相互作用。从非父母到父母的状态转变需要个体优先事项和生理的广泛重组，并通过激素对特定细胞类型的组合作用来促进，这些细胞类型整合在相互连接的全脑神经元回路中。在这篇综述中，我们采用综合方法，整合了多个物种中关于这些主题的历史和当前文献，重点是啮齿动物。新出现的分子、基于电路的和计算技术最近被用于解决我们关于婴儿定向行为的当前知识框架中的突出空白。这项工作提出了关于养育本能和习得成分之间相互作用以及在健康和疾病中调节亲和性与攻击性婴儿定向行为的基本问题。只要有可能，我们就会指出这些技术如何帮助获得新的见解，并为养育的神经生物学开辟新的研究途径。我们希望本综述将为该领域的新手提供介绍，为已经研究养育的人提供综合资源，并为未来的研究设计提供指导。
