MOTHERS who feel no attachment to their newborn babies may lack a neural pathway that is normally triggered by the act of giving birth, a new study of mice suggests.
The maternal skills of female mice genetically predisposed to neglect their young improve for good if they receive a burst of key neural chemicals shortly before giving birth, say researchers in Seattle. And while the factors that cause some women to reject their babies at birth remain unclear, the study hints that a carefully timed dose of drugs might, in some cases, free them from this misery.
Most mice make doting parents. Even those with no experience of raising pups, such as virgin females or young males, will shepherd strays back to the nest. But Steven Thomas and Richard Palmiter of the University of Washington studied mice in which a gene called
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