Meeting Abstract
Maternal care is essential across vertebrates and must be balanced with competing behaviors such as feeding. The underlying neural circuits regulating maternal care are described in mammals, but the mechanisms involved in switching from self-promoting to offspring-promoting behavior is poorly understood. The maternal mouth brooding cichlid Astatotilapia burtoni is an ideal system to examine the neural mechanisms modulating maternal care and feeding. Females undergo a period of forced starvation for ~2 wks after spawning while fry develop in the mouth. We compared neural activation patterns in females under three conditions: brooding, forced starvation, and fed, to examine which brain regions are involved in the conflicting motivational states of maternal care and energy balance. Brooding females were allowed to retain their brood for 12 days, while starved and fed females had fertilized eggs removed from their mouths and underwent either forced starvation or were fed for 12 days, respectively. Using the neural activation marker pS6, we found differential activation among female states in specific brain regions involved in maternal care and feeding. For example, brooding females had greater activation compared to fed and starved females in the ventral part of the ventral telencephalon and preoptic area, regions important for maternal care in mammals. Further, co-labeling for pS6 and galanin was observed in the preoptic area, highlighting a role for this region in maternal care and energetic circuits of fishes. Knowledge of which brain regions facilitate conflicting physiological and behavioral states is important for understanding the plasticity and evolution of neural circuitry controlling maternal care and feeding, with further important biomedical implications for eating disorders.
