0000000000322738
AUTHOR
Nanette Y. Schneider
Neural activation induced by an odour mixture perceived elementally or configurally by the newborn rabbit
National audience; Perception of odours plays a crucial role in mammals facilitating interindividual communication, food choice and detection of danger, even from early in life (e.g. mother-young communication). However, little is known about the brain processing and perception of odorants in mixtures, which is by far the more common situation in life. To better understand how the brain processes odorants in mixtures, we used the newborn rabbit as a model. Rabbit pups display a clear sucking behaviour in response to the mammary pheromone (MP, the single molecule 2MB2) carried in the milk of lactating rabbit females. The MP also promotes associative conditioning and very rapid acquisition of…
Morphology and evolution of the oral shield in marsupial neonates including the newborn monito del monte (Dromiciops gliroides, Marsupialia Microbiotheria) pouch young.
International audience; Newborn marsupials can be arranged into three grades of developmental complexity based on their external form, as well as based on their organ systems and their cytology. The dasyurids are considered the least developed marsupials at birth, while didelphids and peramelids are intermediate, and macropods are the most developed. Currently there is still little information on caenolestid and microbiotherid development at birth. Developmental stages can be graded as G1, G2 and G3, with G1 being the least developed at birth, and G3 the most developed. Marsupials are also characterized by having an extremely developed craniofacial region at birth compared with placentals. …
Centrifugal projections to the main olfactory bulb revealed by trans‐synaptic retrograde tracing in mice
A wide range of evidence indicates that olfactory perception is strongly involved in food intake. However, the polysynaptic circuitry linking the brain areas involved in feeding behavior to the olfactory regions is not well known. The aim of this article was to examine such circuits. Thus, we described, using hodological tools such as transsynaptic viruses (PRV152) transported in a retrograde manner, the long-distance indirect projections (two to three synapses) onto the main olfactory bulb (MOB). The ß-subunit of the cholera toxin which is a monosynaptic retrograde tracer was used as a control to be able to differentiate between direct and indirect projections. Our tracing experiments show…
Spontaneous brain processing of the mammary pheromone in rabbit neonates prior to milk intake.
International audience; Chemical signals play a critical role in interindividual communication, including mother-young relationships. Detecting odor cues released by the mammary area is vital to the newborn's survival. European rabbit females secret a mammary pheromone (MP) in their milk, which releases sucking related orocephalic movements in newborns. Pups spontaneously display these typical movements at birth, independently of any perinatal learning. Our previous Fos mapping study (Charra et al., 2012) performed in 4-day-old rabbits showed that the MP activated a network of brain regions involved in osmoregulation, odor processing and arousal in comparison with a control odor. However, a…
Brain anatomy of the 4‐day‐old European rabbit
International audience; The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a widely used model in fundamental, medical and veterinary neurosciences. Besides investigations in adults, rabbit pups are relevant to study perinatal neurodevelopment and early behaviour. To date, the rabbit is also the only species in which a pheromone - the mammary pheromone (MP) - emitted by lactating females and active on neonatal adaptation has been described. The MP is crucial since it contributes directly to nipple localisation and oral seizing in neonates, i.e. to their sucking success. It may also be one of the non-photic cues arising from the mother, which stimulates synchronisation of the circadian system du…