Plasticity in parental behavior and vasopressin: responses to co-parenting, pup age, and an acute stressor are experience-dependent

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

Neuroscience

Vanessa A. Lazaro¹  Lisa C. Hiura¹  Alexander G. Ophir² 

[1] Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States;null;

关键词: acute stress;    maternal care;    Microtus;    offspring age-dependent parental care;    paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN);    paternal care;    prairie vole;    supraoptic nucleus of the hypothalamus (SON);   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1172845

 received in 2023-02-23, accepted in 2023-03-31,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

IntroductionThe impact of variation in parental caregiving has lasting implications for the development of offspring. However, the ways in which parents impact each other in the context of caregiving is comparatively less understood, but can account for much of the variation observed in the postnatal environment. Prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) demonstrate a range of postnatal social groups, including pups raised by biparental pairs and by their mothers alone. In addition to the challenges of providing parental care, prairie vole parents often experience acute natural stressors (e.g., predation, foraging demands, and thermoregulation) that could alter the way co-parents interact.MethodsWe investigated how variation in the experience of raising offspring impacts parental behavior and neurobiology by administering an acute handling stressor on prairie vole families of single mothers and biparental parents over the course of offspring postnatal development.ResultsMothers and fathers exhibited robust behavioral plasticity in response to the age of their pups, but in sex-dependent ways. Pup-directed care from mothers did not vary as a function of their partner’s presence, but did covary with the number of hypothalamic vasopressin neurons in experience-dependent ways. The relationship between vasopressin neuron numbers and fathers’ behaviors was also contingent upon the stress handling manipulation, suggesting that brain-behavior associations exhibit stress-induced plasticity.ConclusionThese results demonstrate that the behavioral and neuroendocrine profiles of adults are sensitive to distinct and interacting experiences as a parent, and extend our knowledge of the neural mechanisms that may facilitate parental behavioral plasticity.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Hiura, Lazaro and Ophir.