Neurobiology of Maternal Behavior in Nonhuman Mammals: Acceptance, Recognition, Motivation, and Rejection
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Among the different species of mammals, the expression of maternal behavior varies considerably, although the end points of nurturance and protection are the same. Females may display passive or active responses of acceptance, recognition, rejection/fear, or motivation to care for the offspring. Each type of response may indicate different levels of neural activation. Different natural stimuli can trigger the expression of maternal and paternal behavior in both pregnant or virgin females and males, such as hormone priming during pregnancy, vagino-cervical stimulation during parturition, mating, exposure to pups, previous experience, or environmental enrichment. Herein, we discuss how the olfactory pathways and the interconnections of the medial preoptic area (mPOA) with structures such as nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area, amygdala, and bed nucleus of stria terminalis mediate maternal behavior. We also discuss how the triggering stimuli activate oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, galanin, and opioids in neurocircuitries that mediate acceptance, recognition, maternal motivation, and rejection/fear.
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Following birth, activity in the mesolimbic dopamine system drives continuous interactions with offspring, including retrieval, licking, and grooming of pups.
“Following birth, activity in the mesolimbic dopamine (DA) system drives continuous interactions with offspring, including retrieval, licking, and grooming of pups [29,30].”
From The Neurobiology of Love and Pair Bonding from Human and Animal Perspectives (2023) · cites this paper as [29]
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- Authors
- Coria-Avila, G. A., Herrera-Covarrubias, D., García, L. I., Toledo, R., Hernández, M. E., Paredes-Ramos, P., Corona-Morales, A. A., & Manzo, J.
- Affiliations
- Instituto de Investigaciones Cerebrales, Universidad Veracruzana, Avenida Luis Castelazo s/n Col. Industrial Ánimas, Xalapa 91190, Mexico
- Universidad Veracruzana (MX)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Animals
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2022-12-19
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 24
- Pages
- 3589
- ISSN
- 2076-2615 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9774276
- OpenAlex
- W4312140552
- Cited by
- 25
- References
- 128
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 4
- FWCI
- 0.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Animals (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neuropeptides and Animal Physiology
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Keywords
- maternal behavior, non-human mammals, maternal acceptance, maternal recognition, maternal motivation, maternal rejection, olfactory pathway, medial preoptic area, nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area, amygdala, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, galanin, opioids, neurocircuitry, pregnancy, childbirth, environmental enrichment
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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