– Social transmission of maternal behavior via oxytocin and synaptic plasticity –

Robert Froemke
Professor of Otolaryngology, Neuroscience & Physiology, Skirball Institute,
Neuroscience Institute, NYU School of Medicine; Center for Neural Science, NYU

 

Summary

Oxytocin is important for social interactions and maternal behavior. However, little is known about when, where, and how oxytocin modulates neural circuits to improve social cognition. Here I will discuss recent results and unpublished data from our lab on how oxytocin enables maternal behavior in new mother mice. I will focus on experience-dependent plasticity in auditory cortex related to recognizing the significance of pup distress calls, which are important for mother mice retrieving lost pups back to the nest. Surprisingly, this behavior, neural responses, and oxytocin receptor expression were lateralized to the left side of the auditory cortex, perhaps similar to the lateralization of language abilities in humans. I will also describe a new system we have built to combine neural recordings from the auditory cortex and oxytocin neurons of the hypothalamus in vivo, synchronized with days-to-weeks long continuous video monitoring of homecage behavior to identify when oxytocin release and cortical plasticity might occur during natural social and maternal experience.

 

Biosketch

He has a broad background in systems neuroscience, performing his undergraduate work at Tufts on machine learning and building modeling tools for complex systems analysis. For his PhD work with Yang Dan at UC Berkeley, he examined spike-timing-dependent plasticity induced by natural spike trains in cortical networks. His postdoctoral research with Christoph Schreiner and Mike Merzenich at UCSF focused on synaptic plasticity in vivo as related to auditory perception and behavior. As PI or co-PI he has performed studies linking changes in neural activity to changes in perception and behavior in rodent. The three major lines of research in his lab focus on: 1) oxytocin and maternal care in mice, 2) mechanisms of synaptic plasticity for coordinating or ‘balancing’ excitation and inhibition in rodent cortex, and 3) cochlear implant use in rats and humans.

Invited by Françoise Muscatelli – francoise.muscatelli@inserm.fr

 

Zoom Metting – March 29th at 2p.m.

https://zoom.us/j/97577817737?pwd=VHUrdUp6TmFuSzRVcGUvZUVOekxnUT09
ID meeting : 975 7781 7737
Code : Dk7D4K

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