see also:

• psychology

• neurologic drive for social contact:
  • amylin-responsive neurons in the central MPOA (cMPOA) are required for maternal motivation
  • both parental care and female-female social contact depend on amylin and augment its expression
  • a 2022 study showed that social contact-seeking behavior in mice is driven by the peptide amylin in the medial preoptic area (MPOA) of the forebrain, and that being alone decreases the amount of amylin in this brain region
    • six days of isolation led to an almost complete disappearance of amylin, which returned to normal two weeks after the mice were reunited with their cage-mates
    • amylin-expressing neurons in the cMPOA are deactivated upon isolation, and activated upon reunion