The MOTHERMOUSE project: Behavioral and psychoendocrinological rodent studies on the importance of early maternal bonding for adult social and cognitive functioning

Children’s attachment to parental caregivers plays a central role in the etiology of various social and cognitive defects. Since it is ethically inappropriate to involve human infants in invasive experimental research on attachment, the present application proposes experiments in laboratory mice to investigate the biopsychological and psychoendocrinological mechanisms of parent-infant bonding and adult social and cognitive performance. We will study the preference of mouse pups for their mother dams, examine whether this preference depends on the sensitivity of the dam, and determine whether pups can also develop a preference bond with their male sires. Using pharmacological and genetic approaches we will determine the involvement of psychoendocrinological processes in parent-infant bonding, specifically focusing on the oxytocin system. Notably, we will determine whether features of parent-infant bonding affect adult performance in a number of social and cognitive tasks. Finally, we will determine whether stress hormones affect maternal bonding, oxytocin functions and adult performance, and explore whether these epigenetic effects of stress hormones can be prevented or reversed. We hope the proposed experiments may contribute to our understanding of (problematic) child-parent bonding in humans and inspire novel therapeutic interventions.