ArticleTranslational psychiatry2015
The oxytocin system promotes resilience to the effects of neonatal isolation on adult social attachment in female prairie voles.
Article in Translational psychiatry, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 69 papers.
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Who cites it
69 citing papers in PubMed, 112 citations in OpenAlex.
- The oxytocin system mediates behavioral and neurobiological alterations associated with early adversity.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Review
- Interactive impacts of social deprivation and intranasal oxytocin administration on oxytocin receptor density in prairie vole brains.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Dysfunction of the paraventricular thalamus-prelimbic cortex circuit underlies maternal separation-induced deficits in contagious pain.Science advances · 2025Article
- The impact of the early environment on oxytocin receptor epigenetics and potential therapeutic implications.Pediatric research · 2025Review
- The Effect of Maternal Oxytocin Induction during Birth on Early Neonatal Pain and Stress: A Quasi-Experimental Study.Biological research for nursing · 2025Article
- Melanocortin agonism in a social context selectively activates nucleus accumbens in an oxytocin-dependent manner.Neuropharmacology · 2024Article
- From Parental Behavior to Sexual Function: Recent Advances in Oxytocin Research.Current sexual health reports · 2024Review
- Natural variation in oxytocin receptor signaling causes widespread changes in brain transcription: a link to the natural killer gene complex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Review of Major Social Determinants of Health in Schizophrenia-Spectrum Psychotic Disorders: III. Biology.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2023Article
- Review
- An AAV-CRISPR/Cas9 strategy for gene editing across divergent rodent species: Targeting neural oxytocin receptors as a proof of concept.Science advances · 2023Article
- Resilience by design: How nature, nurture, environment, and microbiome mitigate stress and allostatic load.World journal of psychiatry · 2023Review
- Peer Social Environment Impacts Behavior and Dopamine D1 Receptor Density in Prairie Voles (Microtus ochrogaster).Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Distribution of vasopressin 1a and oxytocin receptor protein and mRNA in the basal forebrain and midbrain of the spiny mouse (Acomys cahirinus).Brain structure & function · 2023Article
- The role of the oxytocin system in the resilience of patients with breast cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2023Review
- Oxytocin receptors are widely distributed in the prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) brain: Relation to social behavior, genetic polymorphisms, and the dopamine system.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2022Article
- Infant Stimulation Induced a Rapid Increase in Maternal Salivary Oxytocin.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and Social Behavior: From Neural Circuits to Clinical Opportunities.Endocrinology · 2022Review
- Sex-specific and social experience-dependent oxytocin-endocannabinoid interactions in the nucleus accumbens: implications for social behaviour.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
9 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Genes and social experiences interact to create variation in social behavior and vulnerability to develop disorders of the social domain. Socially monogamous prairie voles display remarkable diversity in neuropeptide receptor systems and social behavior. Here, we examine the interaction of early-life adversity and brain oxytocin receptor (OTR) density on adult social attachment in female prairie voles. First, pups were isolated for 3 h per day, or unmanipulated, from postnatal day 1-14. Adult subjects were tested on the partner preference (PP) test to assess social attachment and OTR density in the brain was quantified. Neonatal social isolation impaired female PP formation, without affecting OTR density. Accumbal OTR density was, however, positively correlated with the percent of time spent huddling with the partner in neonatally isolated females. Females with high accumbal OTR binding were resilient to neonatal isolation. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that parental nurturing shapes neural systems underlying social relationships by enhancing striatal OTR signaling. Thus, we next determined whether early touch, mimicking parental licking and grooming, stimulates hypothalamic OT neuron activity. Tactile stimulation induced immediate-early gene activity in OT neurons in neonates. Finally, we investigated whether pharmacologically potentiating OT release using a melanocortin 3/4 agonist, melanotan-II (10 mg kg(-1) subcutaneously), would mitigate the social isolation-induced impairments in attachment behavior. Neonatal melanotan-II administration buffered against the effects of early isolation on partner preference formation. Thus, variation in accumbal OTR density and early OT release induced by parental nurturing may moderate susceptibility to early adverse experiences, including neglect.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.