Shared neural substrates of prosocial and parenting behaviours - PubMed
12 hours ago
- #prosocial behavior
- #neuroscience
- #parenting
- Mice with higher parenting levels show more prosocial allogrooming toward stressed adults.
- The medial preoptic area (MPOA) bidirectionally regulates allogrooming toward stressed conspecifics.
- Allogrooming and parenting behaviors share overlapping neuronal ensembles in the MPOA.
- Both behaviors are controlled by an MPOA-to-VTA pathway and linked to dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens.
- MPOA neurons activated during parenting are functionally required for allogrooming, and vice versa.
- Findings suggest neural systems for offspring care may scaffold broader prosocial behaviors in adults.