What is it about?
In this work, we investigated how the number of pups in a litter can influence the changes that happen in the dam brain during lactation. To do that, we analyzed how many neurons producing a neuroactive substance called the Melanin-Concentrating Hormone (MCH) appear in the hypothalamus in mothers that had small vs. large litters. What we found is that mothers with large litters had more MCH neurons arising in their hypothalamus than mothers with small litters. Furthermore, artificially reduced litters had less MCH neurons than naturally large litters.
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Why is it important?
There is still a lot we do not know about the changes that happen in the brain of mothers during lactation and weaning. We also do not understand fully how environmental stimuli can influence those changes. With this work, we showed that litter size could affect brain alterations during lactation. This information may help inform public health decisions regarding lactating mothers.
Perspectives
Working on this article was really cool! Although we knew for more than 20 years about the appearance of those MCH neurons in the hypothalamus of lactating mothers, no mechanism has been proposed to explain how they know when to appear. Now we know that the stimulus of the litter after birth is an important signal for the appearance of those neurons!
Giovanne Diniz
Universidade de São Paulo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Litter size determines the number of melanin-concentrating hormone neurons in the medial preoptic area of Sprague Dawley lactating dams, Physiology & Behavior, November 2017, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.08.028.
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