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Watching dog mothers take care of their pups continues to fascinate me, and the large populations of village dogs in Africa and Thailand, where I spent and spend a great deal of my time, provides me with plenty of opportunities to do it. Village dogs are domestic dogs, not wild dogs. Often classified as stray dogs by the inept, ignorant eye of…

Great article, showing even more why puppies should stay with their litter mates and dam for at least 10 weeks, preferably 12 weeks.

#maternal behavior

Sexually dimorphic hypothalamic circuit for maternal behavior and oxytocin secretion

Parental care is a complex stereotypic behaviour toward offspring that is shared by numerous species. In mice, there are striking sex differences in offspring directed behavior. For example, nulliparous females (i.e. not having given birth) behave maternally toward alien pups while males will usually ignore the pups or attack them. Interestingly, Tali Kimchi’s group shows that tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-expressing neurons in the anteroventral periventricular nucleus (AVPV) of the mouse hypothalamus are more numerous in mothers than in virgin females and males, and govern parental behaviours in a sex-specific manner. In females, ablating the AVPV TH+ neurons impaired maternal behaviour whereas optogenetic stimulation or increased TH expression in these cells enhance maternal care. In males, however, this same neuronal cluster has no effect on parental care but rather suppresses adult-directed aggression. Optogenetic activation or increased TH expression in the AVPV TH+ neurons of female mice increases circulating oxytocin, whereas their ablation reduces oxytocin levels. Using neuroanatomical tracing and optogenetic stimulation, we found that AVPV TH+ cells relay a monosynaptic input to oxytocin-expressing neurons in the paraventricular nucleus, suggesting an important role for this neuronal cluster in the control of maternal care and oxytocin secretion, and providing a causal relationship between sexual dimorphism in the adult brain and sex differences in parental behavior.

Note: This work was presented as poster but has already been published in Nature.

Source:

Scott et. al (2015). A sexually dimorphic hypothalamic circuit controls maternal care and oxytocin secretion. Nature 525(7570): 519-22.

#science #neuroscience #brain #sfn15 #maternal behavior #sex differences #oxytocin #rodents #tyrosine hydroxylase #optogenetics

Rodent model suggests that prenatal music appears to be beneficial for dams but detrimental for their offspring

Music has overarching influence in human life. For example, music is capable of inducing physiological responses such as as reducing anxiety and attenuating depression. Furthermore, music is thought to promote fetal development and human fetuses near the last trimester are known to respond to music with heart rate acceleration and motor responses (Kisilevsky, 2004; Al-Qahtani, 2005), since the prenatal period is characterized by its high sensitivity to environmental situations. Recently, there has been an increase in the amount of women who play music for their babies in utero, and images of a women wearing headphones around their pregnant bellies have become more common (just google pregnant women listening to music if you don't believe me). However, the effects of playing antenatal music in humans are controversial and evidence from controlled longitudinal studies is lacking...

To shed some light on this issue, Kubota and colleagues investigated the effects of prenatal music on maternal behavior and offspring behavior in rodents. In short, pregnant rats were exposed to 1 hour of Mozart (65dB) a day during the dark period while they were during the late gestational stage while control dams were exposed to a similar decibel ambient noise. The researchers found that music exposure increased the frequency of positive maternal behaviors following childbirth, as pregnant dams exposed to music during the late gestational period showed increased licking and grooming of their pups and decreased time spent away from their pups during the early neonatal period (PN3-6) compared to control mothers not exposed to music. Notably, this result is consistent with human studies suggesting that pregnant mothers who played music for or sing lullabies to their babies in utero report increased feelings of relaxation and attachment to their infant.

However, Kubota and colleagues found that although prenatal music exposure did not affect anxiety related behavior in the offspring, animals exposed to prenatal music showed increased depressive-like behavior in the Forced Swim Test 6 weeks after birth (i.e. PN45- adolescence), as indexed by increased time spent immobile as well as reduced swimming and climbing. Considering that the group assessed maternal behavior during the neonatal period and found enhanced maternal care in dams previously exposed to music, it seems unlikely that this adverse behavioral phenotype comes as a result of variations in maternal care. I'm not sure if this study will expand (and maybe assess neural correlates of this behavior) and become a publication, but it certainly makes you think twice about the effects of prenatal music and child development.

Anybody know of similar (i.e. longitudinal) studies done on human infants?

Sources:

Al-Qahtani (2005). Foetal response to music and voice. Aust N Z J Obstet Gynaecol. 45(5):414-7.

Kisilevsky, et. al. (2004). Maturation of fetal responses to music. Dev Sci. 7(5):550-9.

N. Kubota, Y. Takano, S. Yanagita, T. Matsuzawa, K. Takeda. The effects of prenatal music on maternal behavior and offspring behavior. Program No. 174.16/VV4-DP7.2013. Neuroscience Meeting Planner. San Diego, CA: Society for Neuroscience, 2013. Online.