Mouse study suggests parental response to infant distress is innate but
adapts to change

Date:
October 7, 2020
Source:
NIH/Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development
Summary:
A new study in mice suggests that parents have an innate capacity
to respond to an infant's cries for help and this capacity may
serve as a foundation from which a parent learns to adjust to an
infant's changing needs.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A National Institutes of Health study in mice suggests that parents
have an innate capacity to respond to an infant's cries for help and
this capacity may serve as a foundation from which a parent learns
to adjust to an infant's changing needs. The study was conducted by
Robert C. Froemke, Ph.D., of New York University School of Medicine,
and colleagues. It appears in Nature.


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When housed with mice who have given birth, unmated female mice will
assist with the care of the newborn pups. The researchers evaluated
the ability of such babysitter mice to respond to a variety of recorded
newborn distress cries. These included typical distress cries as well as
a range of cries that had been digitally altered -- sped up or slowed down
to include more or fewer syllables than typical distress vocalizations.

Experienced babysitters responded to typical distress cries 80%
of the time, compared to the 33% initial response rate of the novice babysitters. Both experienced and novice babysitters at first responded at
only low rates to the altered cries, but both learned to recognize these
cries with time. Eventually, even the novices responded to some types of altered calls as much as 75% of the time. Similarly, auditory centers
in the babysitters' brains activated when the animals heard the calls,
at levels corresponding to their initial responses, and increased as
they became more responsive to the cries. The researchers also found that administering oxytocin improved the rate at which the mice responded to
the cries, while blocking natural oxytocin in the brain reduced their
response rate. Oxytocin has been implicated in maternal bonding and
other behaviors.

These results provide evidence that new parents may be hard-wired to
respond to certain kinds of cries from their infants, but also have
the capacity to expand their repertoire to include other kinds of
vocalizations as well.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by NIH/Eunice_Kennedy_Shriver_National_Institute_of_Child Health_and_Human_Development. Note: Content may be edited for style
and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Jennifer K. Schiavo, Silvana Valtcheva, Chloe J. Bair-Marshall,
Soomin C.

Song, Kathleen A. Martin, Robert C. Froemke. Innate and plastic
mechanisms for maternal behaviour in auditory cortex. Nature,
2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2807-6 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201007145311.htm

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