Maternal approach behaviors toward neonatal calls are impaired by mother's experiences of raising pups with a risk gene variant for autism

How the intrinsic sequence structure of neonatal mouse pup ultrasonic vocalization (USV) and maternal experiences determine maternal behaviors in mice is poorly understood. Our previous work showed that pups with aTbx1heterozygous (HT) mutation, a genetic risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), emit altered call sequences that do not induce maternal approach behaviors in C57BL6/J mothers. Here, we tested how maternal approach behaviors induced by wild-type and HT USVs are influenced by the mother's experience in raising pups of these two genotypes. The results showed that wild-type USVs were effective in inducing maternal approach behaviors when mothers raised wild-type but not HT pups. The USVs of HT pups were ineffective regardless of whether mothers raised HT or wild-type pups. However, the sequence structure of pup USVs had no effect on the general, non-directional incentive motivation of maternal behaviors. Our data show how the mother's experience with a pup with a genetic risk for ASD alters the intrinsic incentive values of USV sequences in maternal approach behaviors.

Automated summary

Wild-type USVs induce maternal approach behaviors in C57BL6/J mothers raising wild-type pups, but not in mothers raising HT pups. The sequence structure of pup USVs has no effect on the general incentive motivation of maternal behaviors.