Premium
Maternal care can rapidly induce an odor‐guided huddling preference in rat pups
Author(s) -
Kojima Sayuri,
Alberts Jeffrey R.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.20349
Subject(s) - licking , odor , psychology , conditioning , developmental psychology , preference , conditioned place preference , medicine , neuroscience , dopamine , statistics , mathematics , economics , microeconomics
Olfactory‐guided huddling is learned and expressed by postnatal day (PND) 15, when rat pups huddle preferentially with conspecifics or with targets bearing an odor previously associated with maternal care. Experiment 1 replicated this induction of an odor‐guided huddling preference with a truncated regime of conditioning with a scented foster dam. Pups exposed to an odor in association with foster maternal care during five daily 2‐hr sessions on PNDs 1–5, 5–9, or 10–14, but not pups merely exposed to the odor, displayed a huddling preference for the conditioned odor, but only when conditioning commenced after PND5. Experiment 2 demonstrated that a single, 2‐hr exposure to a scented foster dam can induce a huddling preference in pups. Analysis of maternal behavior during the 2‐hr conditioning sessions on PND14 revealed that frequency of maternal hovering over pups, but not licking/grooming or duration of contact, was associated with induction of the odor preference. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 51: 95–105, 2009