Maternal Behaviour

alison Fleming
fleming@psych.utoronto.ca

1. Your behavioral findings on the effects of prenatal stress on later induction latencies is fascinating....Any idea about the type of maternal behavior shown by the stressed  moms? I ask this because we have found that if moms show reduced licking of their litter, the litter grow up showing altered maternal responsiveness to their offspring. Have you done any cross-fostering?

2. Your findings that in the maternally-inexperienced animal one only sees c-fos expression associated with maternal behavior in the aob under conditions where maternal behavior is actually being expressed is certainly consistent with previous work by Numan as well as by our group for c-fos expression within the mpoa-Do you think the same results would be found if animals were exposed to a novel odor, instead of pups?

3.  If one looks at the density and pattern of c-fos expression in the 5 prenatally stressed animals that in fact did show maternal behavior during inductions and compared them with the nonstressed maternal animals, do you find any differences?