Neuromodulation of maternal circuits by oxytocin

Abstract

Motherhood in mammals involves tremendous changes throughout the body and central nervous system, which support attention and nurturing of infants. Maternal care consists of complex behaviors, such as nursing and protection of the offspring, requiring new mothers to become highly sensitive to infant needs. Long-lasting neural plasticity in various regions of the cerebral cortex may enable the perception and recognition of infant cues, important for appropriate caregiving responses. Recent findings have demonstrated that the neuropeptide oxytocin is involved in a number of physiological processes, including parturition and lactation and dynamically shaping neuronal responses to infant stimuli as well. Here, we review experience-dependent changes within the cortex occurring throughout motherhood, focusing on plasticity of the somatosensory and auditory cortex. We outline the role of oxytocin in gating cortical plasticity and discuss potential mechanisms regulating oxytocin release in response to different sensory stimuli.

The parental brain and behavior: A target for endocrine disruption

“…The expression levels of estrogen receptors and oxytocin receptors in the MPOA and other regions such as the amygdala, are positively correlated with natural variations in maternal care (Champagne et al, 2001). It is well known that exposures to estrogens significantly increase oxytocin receptor expression in various brain regions directly involved in maternal behavior (Bale et al, 1995;Pedersen, 1997) but cortical regions are also impacted; oxytocin activity via oxytocin receptor expressing neurons in the auditory cortex and in the somatosensory cortex of mouse dams increases the salience of pup calls, facilitating pup retrieval (Sabihi et al, 2014;Marlin et al, 2015;Valtcheva & Froemke, 2018). While the OXT system is mostly activated by the social interaction with the pups, the onset of activation and fine tuning with early offspring-mother communication is modulated by steroid release during pregnancy.…”

Regulation of perceptual learning by chronic chemogenetic manipulation of parvalbumin-positive interneurons

“…In addition, future studies are needed to determine whether the role of PV-related inhibition on auditory discrimination abilities is lateralized. Whereas previous studies have reported impaired performance in sound localization (Heffner and Heffner, 1990) and discrimination of frequency-modulated tones (Rybalko et al, 2006) following lesions in either left, right, or bilateral auditory cortex, more recent investigations suggest that the processing of physiologically-relevant stimuli might indeed be lateralized (Valtcheva and Froemke, 2019). Given that evidence to date regarding the lateralization of auditory discrimination abilities remains inconclusive, and the more general focus of the present investigation, we decided to perform bilateral virus injections.…”

An acute dose of intranasal oxytocin rapidly increases maternal communication and maintains maternal care in primiparous postpartum California mice

“…There was also a nonsignificant trend for IN OXT to improve the correlation between mother and pup USVs. If the removal from the home cage at the start of the test disrupted the coordination between mothers and pups, IN OXT may be mediating this negative effect by increasing the salience of pup whine stimuli (Valtcheva & Froemke, 2019), allowing mothers to more effectively and efficiently cope with the challenge. During reunion, we found support for our initial prediction: maternal simple sweeps and pup whines positively correlated.…”