Brain-derived neurotrophic factor signaling plays a causal role in female-typical social behavior and modulates oxytocin neuron gene expression.

A cross-fostered population of mice reveals loci on offspring chromosomes 5 and 7 that modify the behaviour of their mothers, along with evidence of coadaptation between offspring and parental traits.

Early life adversity led to hyper-innervation from the basolateral amygdala to the prefrontal cortex earlier in females than males and disrupted maturation of functional connectivity, which predicted anxiety-like outcomes.

Mountain gorillas, who live in close-knit social groups with siblings and non-siblings of both sexes throughout their lives, show distinct behavioral biases towards maternal versus paternal kin.

Mandrill mothers know best because they use their offspring’s facial resemblance with other infants to guide their social opportunities towards similar-looking ones as an adaptive maternal behavior.

Epigenetic reprogramming by LSD1/KDM1A acts at fertilization in mice to enable embryogenesis and prevent behavioural abnormalities.

Despite voluntary exercise being rewarding to mice, pregnancy hormones act in the maternal brain to markedly reduce the time females choose to engage in this activity.

Mother brain shows special sensitivity to social moments of mother-infant synchrony, compared to other caregiving experiences, through enhanced activation across the caregiving network, response to oxytocin administration, and temporal consistency.

Oxytocin in the amygdala suppresses freezing of mothers when exposed to a threat in the presence of their offspring, allowing for pup protection and transmission of information about danger from mothers to pups.