Maternal experience alters brain-wide representation of infant cries

Pup calls signal the presence of a mouse infant in need of care (Bernd Haack et al., 1983; Ehret, 2005). Previous work demonstrated that experience-dependent plasticity within the left primary auditory cortex is oxytocin-facilitated and enhances neural and behavioral responses to these distress vocalizations (Marlin et al., 2015). However, whether maternal experience reshapes pup call processing beyond auditory regions remains unknown. Here, we show that both innate and learned maternal experience shape pup call-evoked behavior and brain-wide neural responses. Combining behavioral assays, whole-brain activity mapping, and oxytocinergic projection analyses, we find that pup calls recruit dist