Parental controls
It could be that the key to being a better parent is all in your head, Harvard researchers say. In a study in mice, Catherine Dulac, the Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and a Howard Hughes investigator, has pinpointed galanin neurons in the brain’s medial preoptic area (MPOA) that appear to regulate parental behavior. If similar neurons are at work in humans, it could offer clues to the treatment of conditions such as postpartum depression. The study is described in a May 15 paper published in Nature. “If you look across different animal species, there are some species in which the father contributes to caring for the young — sometimes the work is divided equally, sometimes the father does most of the work — and there are species in which the father does nothing,” Dulac said. “The essential question is: Where is that variability coming from? We may be tempted...