Dopamine Dynamics Underlying Maternal Behavioral Acquisition Facilitated by Top-down Orbitofrontal Inputs

Maternal behaviors, which are crucial for the survival of mammalian infants, require the coordinated operation of multiple brain regions to process infant cues, make decisions, and execute motor plans. Although these processes likely demand higher cognitive functions, the top-down regulation of limbic parental programs remains poorly understood. Here, we show that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) excitatory projection neurons promote maternal caregiving behaviors in female mice. By chronic microendoscopy, we observed robust yet adaptable representations of pup-directed anticipatory and motor-related activities within the OFC that significantly overlapped with those encoding nonsocial reward signals. The inactivation of OFC output reduced the phasic activities of midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons specifically tied to pup retrieval and impaired the modulation of DA release to the ventral striatum during the acquisition of maternal behaviors. Collectively, our study identifies top-down signals from the OFC that modulate the plasticity of the DA system, thereby promoting maternal behaviors. Highlights ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.