profiling-maternal-behavior-responses-during-whole-brain-imaging

Profiling Maternal Behavior Responses During Whole-Brain Imaging

Recent advancements in whole-brain imaging tools have enabled neuroscientists to investigate how coordinated brain activity processes external cues, ...

Columbia University

The BRAIN initiative: a pioneering program on the precipice.

Oxytocin is a hypothalamic neuropeptide that has gained attention for the effects on social behavior. Recent findings shed new light on the mechanisms of oxytocin in synaptic plasticity and adaptively modifying neural circuits for social interactions such as conspecific recognition, pair bonding, and maternal care. Here, we review several of these newer studies on oxytocin in the context of previous findings, with an emphasis on social behavior and circuit plasticity in various brain regions shown to be enriched for oxytocin receptors. We provide a framework that highlights current circuit-level mechanisms underlying the widespread action of oxytocin. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 77: 169-189, 2017.

Oxytocin modulation of neural circuits for social behavior.

On the 50th anniversary of the Society for Neuroscience, we reflect on the remarkable progress that the field has made in understanding the nervous system, and look forward to the contributions of the next 50 years. We predict a substantial acceleration of our understanding of the nervous system that will drive the development of new therapeutic strategies to treat diseases over the course of the next five decades. We also see neuroscience at the nexus of many societal topics beyond medicine, including education, consumerism, and the justice system. In combination, advances made by basic, translational, and clinical neuroscience research in the next 50 years have great potential for lasting improvements in human health, the economy, and society.

The Next 50 Years of Neuroscience.

Maternal care, including by non-biological parents, is important for offspring survival. Oxytocin, which is released by the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN), is a critical maternal hormone. In mice, oxytocin enables neuroplasticity in the auditory cortex for maternal recognition of pup distress. However, it is unclear how initial parental experience promotes hypothalamic signalling and cortical plasticity for reliable maternal care. Here we continuously monitored the behaviour of female virgin mice co-housed with an experienced mother and litter. This documentary approach was synchronized with neural recordings from the virgin PVN, including oxytocin neurons. These cells were activated as virgins were enlisted in maternal care by experienced mothers, who shepherded virgins into the nest and demonstrated pup retrieval. Virgins visually observed maternal retrieval, which activated PVN oxytocin neurons and promoted alloparenting. Thus rodents can acquire maternal behaviour by social transmission, providing a mechanism for adapting the brains of adult caregivers to infant needs via endogenous oxytocin.

Oxytocin neurons enable social transmission of maternal behaviour.

A practical guide to graduate school interviewing for historically excluded individuals.

Parental care is crucial for the survival of all mammalian species. Given the evolutionary importance of parenting, this behavioral repertoire must be supported by circuitry that is innate but also capable of learning and flexibility - adjusting to changing environmental demands. In rodents, parental care is triggered by the perception of cues emitted by a pup. Caregiver-pup interactions are often composed of multimodal sensory stimuli that require caregivers to integrate across sensory modalities. In this review, we focus on two sensory modalities essential for the parental experience: smell and hearing. We examine how smell and hearing are combined with other senses to identify offspring in need of care. Understanding how multimodal stimuli are integrated in the caregiver brain to inform parental behavior is an important step in understanding the circuitry that underlies this complex and crucial behavioral repertoire. In this review, we will discuss recent advances in the field of rodent parental behavior, highlighting studies that have begun to disentangle the neural circuitry that processes the multisensory cues that are involved in caregiver-offspring interactions.

Integration of olfactory and auditory cues eliciting parental behavior.

We are 52 Black scientists. Here, we establish the context of Juneteenth in STEMM and discuss the barriers Black scientists face, the struggles they endure, and the lack of recognition they receive. We review racism's history in science and provide institutional-level solutions to reduce the burdens on Black scientists.

Juneteenth in STEMM and the barriers to equitable science.

Olfactory receptor (OR) choice represents an example of genetically hardwired stochasticity, where every olfactory neuron expresses one out of ~2000 OR alleles in the mouse genome in a probabilistic, yet stereotypic fashion. Here, we propose that topographic restrictions in OR expression are established in neuronal progenitors by two opposing forces: polygenic transcription and genomic silencing, both of which are influenced by dorsoventral gradients of transcription factors NFIA, B, and X. Polygenic transcription of OR genes may define spatially constrained OR repertoires, among which one OR allele is selected for singular expression later in development. Heterochromatin assembly and genomic compartmentalization of OR alleles also vary across the axes of the olfactory epithelium and may preferentially eliminate ectopically expressed ORs with more dorsal expression destinations from this 'privileged' repertoire. Our experiments identify early transcription as a potential 'epigenetic' contributor to future developmental patterning and reveal how two spatially responsive probabilistic processes may act in concert to establish deterministic, precise, and reproducible territories of stochastic gene expression.

Article	Year
The BRAIN initiative: a pioneering program on the precipice. Nature neuroscience\| PubMed ID: 39578571	2024
Oxytocin modulation of neural circuits for social behavior. Developmental neurobiology\| PubMed ID: 27626613	2017
The Next 50 Years of Neuroscience. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience\| PubMed ID: 31896564	2020
Oxytocin neurons enable social transmission of maternal behaviour. Nature\| PubMed ID: 34381215	2021
A practical guide to graduate school interviewing for historically excluded individuals. American journal of physiology. Heart and circulatory physiology\| PubMed ID: 37027327	2023
Integration of olfactory and auditory cues eliciting parental behavior. Journal of neuroendocrinology\| PubMed ID: 37277889	2023
Juneteenth in STEMM and the barriers to equitable science. Cell\| PubMed ID: 37295396	2023
Opposing, spatially-determined epigenetic forces impose restrictions on stochastic olfactory receptor choice. eLife\| PubMed ID: 38108811	2023

Bianca J. Marlin

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