Abstract
BackgroundAppropriate parental care by fathers greatly facilitates health in human family life. Much less is known from animal studies regarding the factors and neural circuitry that affect paternal behavior compared with those affecting maternal behavior. We recently reported that ICR mouse sires displayed maternal-like retrieval behavior when they were separated from pups and caged with their mates (co-housing) because the sires receive communicative interactions via ultrasonic and pheromone signals from the dams. We investigated the brain structures involved in regulating this activity by quantifying c-Fos-immunoreactive cells as neuronal activation markers in the neural pathway of male parental behavior.Resultsc-Fos expression in the medial preoptic area (mPOA) was significantly higher in sires that exhibited retrieval behavior (retrievers) than those with no such behavior (non-retrievers). Identical increased expression was found in the mPOA region in the retrievers stimulated by ultrasonic vocalizations or pheromones from their mates. Such increases in expression were not observed in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), nucleus accumbens (NAcc) or ventral palladium (VP). On the following day that we identified the families of the retrievers or non-retrievers, c-Fos expression in neuronal subsets in the mPOA, VTA, NAcc and VP was much higher in the retriever sires when they isolated together with their mates in new cages. This difference was not observed in the singly isolated retriever sires in new cages. The non-retriever sires did not display expression changes in the four brain regions that were assessed.ConclusionThe mPOA neurons appeared to be activated by direct communicative interactions with mate dams, including ultrasonic vocalizations and pheromones. The mPOA-VTA-NAcc-VP neural circuit appears to be involved in paternal retrieval behavior.
Highlights
Appropriate parental care by fathers greatly facilitates health in human family life
We demonstrated that paternal behaviors, including pup retrieval, grooming, crouching or huddling, were improved in CD38 knockout sires treated with oxytocin and/or with local reexpression of CD38 in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) compared with the parental behaviors in untreated CD38 knockout sires [22]
Based on the hypothesis that the neural circuitry for maternal behavior proposed for females [18] is applicable to the neural circuitry of males, we examined the expression levels of c-Fos protein in the medial preoptic area (mPOA), ventral tegmental area (VTA), NAcc and ventral palladium (VP) of sires with or without the induction of paternal behavior by communicative interactions after co-housing between the mate pairs
Summary
Appropriate parental care by fathers greatly facilitates health in human family life. We investigated the brain structures involved in regulating this activity by quantifying c-Fos-immunoreactive cells as neuronal activation markers in the neural pathway of male parental behavior. Numerous studies on the neural circuitry of female parental behavior have shown that medial preoptic area (mPOA) is important for the control of maternal behavior in rodents [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Several investigations have explored the roles of the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the ventral palladium (VP) in the regulation of parental behavior [8,10,11,16,18,19]. Disinhibiting VP neurons may actuate the motor activities of maternal parental behavior [2,18]
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