Nurturing Plays Big Role in Survival and Thriving

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Studies show that nurturing plays a major role in survival. Researchers removed a gene from mice that is central to nurturing, and this is what they found:

"Initially, the researchers were puzzled by their findings. Despite the lack of fosB, the first generation of mutant mice seemed perfectly normal. But when they mated and gave birth, their litters died within a day or two. Jennifer Brown, a graduate student who conducted the experiments, noticed that the mothers behaved oddly. Unlike normal mice, which gather their pups together in the nest and crouch over them to nurse them and keep them warm, the mutants left their newborns scattered about and ignored them. The babies, unfed, untended and probably cold, could not survive."

"Subsequent studies showed that the mothers were physically capable of nursing and that later offspring were healthy at birth; removed from the mothers and raised by normal females, the pups thrived. The only possible explanation for the deaths lay in the mutant mothers' failure to take care of their young."

"The researchers said that fosB and related genes might help regulate nurturing in higher mammals as well. FosB is clearly present in human beings, Dr. Greenberg said. But he declined to speculate about its possible role in human behavior."

-- The New York Times, "Gene May Be Clue to the Nature of Nurturing"

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E5DD1739F935A15754C0A960958260
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