Excited to share our latest work in @nature.com showing shared neural substrates for parenting and prosocial helping behavior. Full text available here: rdcu.be/e6PnY
Interestingly, silencing the activity of this region selectively reduced active decisions in targeted mice but elicited compensatory increases in non-manipulated partners, preserving overall group-level huddle time.
We find that specific neurons in the medial preoptic area that regulate parenting are also critical for comforting behavior toward adults. This suggests that neural systems evolved for offspring care may have provided a scaffold for broader prosocial support between adults.