Seminar: Kathryn Mari Lenz

You are invited to hear Kathryn Mari Lenz, graduate student in the Sengelaub Laboratory, present her Ph.D. Dissertation talk for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology and Neural Science entitled, "Mechanisms mediating the effects of maternal care on the masculinization of spinal motoneurons."

Monday, September 14
2:00 p.m.
Psychology Building Room 128

Summary:
Early experience shapes the neural and behavioral development of individuals. Early maternal care is one such experience, regulating development and exerting a lifelong impact on the nervous system, behavior, and disease. Maternal care in rodents is known to regulate the development of many neurobehavioral systems, influencing adult stress, anxiety, learning and memory, maternal, and sexual behaviors. Reductions in maternal licking behavior produce deficits in male copulatory behavior or offspring and underlying alterations in the development of the motoneurons controlling penile reflexes. The goal of this dissertation was to explore the mechanisms through which maternal care alters the development of these motoneurons, with a focus on sensory afferents from the licked skin as well as the hormone, oxytocin. Using anatomical, immunohistochemical, and endocrine techniques, it was determined that both sensory afferents and oxytocin are likely mediators of the effects of maternal care on the sexual differentiation of spinal motoneurons in the spinal nucleus of the bulbocavernosus. These results suggest that these mechanisms may act in concert to shape neural and behavioral development of offspring, and illustrate that the sexual differentiation of the nervous system is shaped by early life experience.