Hormones control paternal interest in offspring
Friday, August 7, 2020 - 06:50
in Health & Medicine
Basing their research on an unexpected interspecies difference between rats and mice, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University have mapped a system in the brain that controls paternal behavior towards offspring. A key component in this behavior is the hormone prolactin, which prepares females for motherhood and has now been shown to control paternal behavior as well. The study has been published in the journal Cell.