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Profiling Maternal Behavior Responses During Whole-Brain Imaging
07:12

Profiling Maternal Behavior Responses During Whole-Brain Imaging

Published on: January 24, 2025

A mother's brain knows

Dave Grattan1

  • 1Centre for Neuroendocrinology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Journal of Neuroendocrinology
|October 19, 2011
PubMed

Prolactin is a pregnancy hormone that is essential for development of the mammary gland for milk production. In addition, prolactin exerts important actions in the maternal brain, resulting in changes in maternal physiology and behaviour that help the mother cope with the new demands of pregnancy, childbirth and lactation. Hence, the same hormonal signal is used both by brain and body to recognise and adapt to these new physiological states.

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