# Shared neural circuits of prosocial and parenting behaviors in the hypothalamus

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2024 · $40,969

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Affiliative caregiving behaviors are essential for the survival and well-being of a social species. Specifically,
prosocial comforting behavior can improve the physical and mental health of distressed individuals. Similarly,
parental care is critical for offspring survival and also benefits the welfare of offspring. However, despite the
importance of both empathetic prosocial behaviors and parental caregiving for developing and maintaining
social bonds, their underlying neural circuitry remain incompletely characterized. While prosocial care is
primarily directed towards adult animals, a long-standing proposal for the origin of prosocial care points to
potential evolutionary roots in parental care: the need to support helpless offspring drove the development of
neural, chemical, and psychological sensitivity to detect contextual cues of others’ needs. The proposed
research will explore the shared neural circuits underlying these behaviors, providing insight into the
fundamental principles subserving social affiliation. While much is known about the positive control of
parenting, the neural circuitry of comforting prosocial behavior is not as well defined. The medial preoptic
area (MPOA) is a key region for regulating parenting behaviors. Recent evidence suggests the MPOA may
also be involved in modulating prosocial comforting behavior in rodents. Other lines of evidence implicate the
dopaminergic system in affiliative and parenting behavior through inhibitory inputs to the ventral tegmental
area (VTA). This proposal hypothesizes that the inhibitory MPOA-VTA circuit is functionally significant as
a shared node for prosocial and parental behaviors in mice. My central hypothesis will be tested in two
specific aims: (1) determine if inhibitory MPOA neurons projecting to the VTA control affiliative allogrooming
and parental behavior, and (2) characterize how these encode social sensory cues as well as
offspring-directed and conspecific-directed caregiving behavior. Collectively, these experiments will expand
our understanding of the neural circuits shaping both prosocial and parenting behaviors, which are critical to
the formation of fundamental social bonds. A more robust mechanistic understanding of the MPOA-VTA and
its functions in prosocial and parental circuits will offer insights into the long-postulated role of parental care in
mammals as the origin of social affiliation.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10873105
- **Project number:** 5F31MH134495-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Kayla Y Lim
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $40,969
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-07-01 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10873105

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10873105, Shared neural circuits of prosocial and parenting behaviors in the hypothalamus (5F31MH134495-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-28 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10873105. Licensed CC0.

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