Maternal approach behaviors toward neonatal calls are impaired by mother's experiences of raising pups with a risk gene variant for autism

Risa Kato, Akihiro Machida, Kensaku Nomoto, Gina Kang, Takeshi Hiramoto, Kenji Tanigaki, Kazutaka Mogi, Noboru Hiroi, Takefumi Kikusui

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

How the intrinsic sequence structure of neonatal mouse pup ultrasonic vocalization (USV) and maternal experiences determine maternal behaviors in mice is poorly understood. Our previous work showed that pups with a Tbx1 heterozygous (HT) mutation, a genetic risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), emit altered call sequences that do not induce maternal approach behaviors in C57BL6/J mothers. Here, we tested how maternal approach behaviors induced by wild-type and HT USVs are influenced by the mother's experience in raising pups of these two genotypes. The results showed that wild-type USVs were effective in inducing maternal approach behaviors when mothers raised wild-type but not HT pups. The USVs of HT pups were ineffective regardless of whether mothers raised HT or wild-type pups. However, the sequence structure of pup USVs had no effect on the general, non-directional incentive motivation of maternal behaviors. Our data show how the mother's experience with a pup with a genetic risk for ASD alters the intrinsic incentive values of USV sequences in maternal approach behaviors.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)108-113
Number of pages6
JournalDevelopmental Psychobiology
Volume63
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2021

Keywords

  • 22q11
  • ASD
  • CNV
  • Tbx1
  • USV
  • maternal behaviors
  • mouse

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Developmental and Educational Psychology
  • Developmental Neuroscience
  • Developmental Biology
  • Behavioral Neuroscience

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