小柯机器人

科学家揭示听觉皮质中产妇行为的先天和可塑机制
2020-10-11 21:46

美国纽约大学医学院Robert C. Froemke研究团队发现听觉皮质中产妇行为的先天和可塑机制。这一研究成果于2020年10月7日在线发表在国际学术期刊《自然》上。

研究人员发现,小鼠母性行为的发作是由内在机制与听觉皮层中经验依赖性可塑性之间的相互作用引起的。在产妇雌性中,音节间间隔(ISI)在75到375毫秒之间的呼叫会引起幼崽的取回,并且皮质反应在这些ISI中得到了概括。相比之下,未生育雌性会在神经元上和行为上对最常见的(“典型”)ISI敏感。抑制性和兴奋性神经反应最初在未生育小鼠的皮层中失配,并具有失调的抑制作用和过窄的兴奋作用。
 
在共同居住实验中,兴奋性反应变宽,从而代表更广泛的ISI,而抑制性调谐则变尖锐,以形成感知边界。研究人员在共居期间呈现了合成呼唤,并观察到神经行为反应已调整以匹配这些统计数据,该过程需要皮层活动和下丘脑催产素系统。因此,神经塑性机制建立在小鼠听觉皮层的内在敏感性上,并能实现快速可塑性,从而实现可靠的育儿行为。
 
据悉,婴儿的哭声会在父母中引起强烈反响。尚不清楚动物父母对新生幼崽的发声是原本就敏感的,还是知道声音中对父母需求的线索。在小鼠中,未生育的雌性不知道幼崽遇险呼叫的含义,但是在与母亲一起居住后,能够将单独的幼崽取回到巢穴。遇险呼叫是可变的,并且需要未生育小鼠对呼叫进行识别从而得到可靠的取回。
 
附:英文原文

Title: Innate and plastic mechanisms for maternal behaviour in auditory cortex

Author: Jennifer K. Schiavo, Silvana Valtcheva, Chloe J. Bair-Marshall, Soomin C. Song, Kathleen A. Martin, Robert C. Froemke

Issue&Volume: 2020-10-07

Abstract: Infant cries evoke powerful responses in parents1,2,3,4. Whether parental animals are intrinsically sensitive to neonatal vocalizations, or instead learn about vocal cues for parenting responses is unclear. In mice, pup-naive virgin females do not recognize the meaning of pup distress calls, but retrieve isolated pups to the nest after having been co-housed with a mother and litter5,6,7,8,9. Distress calls are variable, and require co-caring virgin mice to generalize across calls for reliable retrieval10,11. Here we show that the onset of maternal behaviour in mice results from interactions between intrinsic mechanisms and experience-dependent plasticity in the auditory cortex. In maternal females, calls with inter-syllable intervals (ISIs) from 75 to 375 milliseconds elicited pup retrieval, and cortical responses were generalized across these ISIs. By contrast, naive virgins were neuronally and behaviourally sensitized to the most common (‘prototypical’) ISIs. Inhibitory and excitatory neural responses were initially mismatched in the cortex of naive mice, with untuned inhibition and overly narrow excitation. During co-housing experiments, excitatory responses broadened to represent a wider range of ISIs, whereas inhibitory tuning sharpened to form a perceptual boundary. We presented synthetic calls during co-housing and observed that neurobehavioural responses adjusted to match these statistics, a process that required cortical activity and the hypothalamic oxytocin system. Neuroplastic mechanisms therefore build on an intrinsic sensitivity in the mouse auditory cortex, and enable rapid plasticity for reliable parenting behaviour.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2807-6

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2807-6

Nature:《自然》,创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团,最新IF:69.504
官方网址:http://www.nature.com/
投稿链接:http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html


本期文章:《自然》:Online/在线发表

分享到:

0