Abstract
Female mice can learn to respond to distress calls from young mice — an ability that has now been found to be improved through signalling by the hormone oxytocin in the left auditory cortex of the brain. See Article p.499 The role of oxytocin in modulating social interactions and maternal behaviour is well documented, but how this hormone influences neural circuits to drive these behavioral changes is not well understood. Here, Robert Froemke and colleagues study pup retrieval behaviour in mice and find that oxytocin modulates cortical responses to pup calls specifically in the left auditory cortex. In virgin females, call-evoked responses were enhanced, thus increasing their salience, by pairing oxytocin delivery in left auditory cortex with the calls. This enhancement came about through a specific balancing of the magnitude and timing of inhibition with excitation.
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