Sex-Specific Differences in Oxytocin Receptor Expression and Function for Parental Behavior.

ABSTRACT: Parental care is among the most profound behavior expressed by humans and other animals. Despite intense interest in understanding the biological basis of parental behaviors, it remains unknown how much of parenting is encoded by the genome and which abilities instead are learned or can be refined by experience. One critical factor at the intersection between innate behaviors and experience-dependent learning is oxytocin, a neurohormone important for maternal physiology and neuroplasticity. Oxytocin acts throughout the body and brain to promote prosocial and maternal behaviors and modulates synaptic transmission to affect neural circuit dynamics. Recently we developed specific antibodies to mouse oxytocin receptors, found that oxytocin receptors are left lateralized in female auditory cort

SUBMITTER: Mitre M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7500123 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature