“Research in humans and nonhuman animals indicates that social affiliation, and particularly maternal bonding, depends on reward circuitry. Although numerous mechanistic studies in rodents demonstrated that maternal bonding depends on striatal dopamine transmission, the neurochemistry supporting maternal behavior in humans has not been described so far.” In this study, Atzel and colleagues tested the role of central dopamine in human bonding.
The results of their functional MRI-PET study suggest that synchronous maternal behavior is associated with increased dopamine responses to the mother’s infant and stronger intrinsic connectivity within the medial amygdala network. Moreover, stronger network connectivity is associated with increased dopamine responses within the network and decreased plasma oxytocin. “Together, these data indicate that dopamine is involved in human bonding. Compared with other mammals, humans have an unusually complex social life. The complexity of human bonding cannot be fully captured in nonhuman animal models, particularly in pathological bonding, such as that in autistic spectrum disorder or postpartum depression. Thus, investigations of the neurochemistry of social bonding in humans, for which this study provides initial evidence, are warranted.”
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Atzel S, Touroutoglou A, Rudy T, Salcedo S, Feldman R, Hooker JM, Dickerson BC, Catana C and Barrett LF: Dopamine in the medial amygdala network mediates human bonding. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 114(9):2361-2366 (2017).
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