Summary: Cooperative caregiving is when several members of a group work together to raise offspring. Humans and rodents both live and raise young communally, so studying animal families can show how the brain supports caregiving. With support from the Brain Research Foundation, Dr. Robert Froemke of NYU School of Medicine is recording oxytocin neurons in mouse families living in naturalistic environments. The goal is to understand the neuroscience of caregiving as it happens outside the lab.
What Is Cooperative Caregiving?
Cooperative caregiving is the shared work of raising young across a group rather than by one parent alone. Animals can work together in groups to achieve specific aims with higher success rates than if acting alone, and for communally living species such as humans and rodents, group dynamics shape essentially every aspect of life.
That shared effort goes beyond childcare. These collective behaviors help animals overcome challenges to survival and depend on the social relationships between individuals, who work together to gather food and water, build nests and burrows, and communally raise offspring.
For the neuroscience of caregiving, this matters because social behaviors including child rearing, pair bonding, and other relationships are critical to the success of mammalian social groups, and are fundamental to human health and happiness. Understanding the brain wiring behind caregiving is part of understanding what keeps families, and people, well.
What Role Does Oxytocin Play in Social Bonding and Caregiving?
Oxytocin is one of the brain’s central chemical messengers for social connection. The hypothalamus triggers its release from the pituitary gland, and it works as a physiological brake on the stress system, suppressing cortisol and reducing reactivity in the amygdala, the brain’s threat-detection center.
Its role in bonding is shared between people. When two people make physical contact, oxytocin is released in both, strengthening trust, increasing prosocial behavior, and reinforcing group affiliation. Social touch also activates the brain’s reward system, including the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area, which release dopamine and make human connection feel intrinsically rewarding.
The neurochemistry of bonding shows up clearly in early life. Placing premature infants skin-to-skin against a parent in neonatal intensive care has dramatic effects on neurological development, stress regulation, weight gain, and long-term emotional security. BRF’s article on how physical contact affects the brain explores this mechanism in more depth.
Oxytocin is also at the center of BRF-funded caregiving research. Dr. Froemke’s project uses wireless neural recordings from oxytocin neurons to study social behavior and parental care.
Is Caregiving Instinctual or Learned?
This remains one of the open questions in the neuroscience of parenting, and the honest answer is that researchers are still working it out. A major reason is how caregiving has been studied.
Much is known about the neural circuits important for social behavior, but most studies of neural activity have been performed under laboratory conditions. It is unclear how pairs or groups interacting in the lab relate to the spontaneous behaviors animals perform in larger environments or outdoors. As a result, little is known about the neural computations underlying behaviors like child rearing and pair bonding, especially in complex naturalistic environments.
In other words, observing caregiving where it naturally happens, across a whole family and over time, is the next step toward answering the nature-versus-nurture question with evidence rather than assumption.
How Is BRF Advancing Research Into the Neuroscience of Families?
Through its 2025 Scientific Innovations Award, BRF is funding a project designed to close that gap. In it, the Froemke and Lin labs at NYU are working together for the first time to study social behavior in mouse colonies, using neural recordings in complex environments that simulate outdoor conditions.
Each lab brings a distinct strength. The Froemke lab invented a behavioral system for 24/7 monitoring of mouse family life and social interactions in home cages, which has already led to new discoveries about mouse behavior. The Lin lab has carried out fundamental studies of aggression.
The research setting is built to resemble the wild. A new vivarium features naturalistic burrows and large 10’x10′ enclosures with light/dark cycles, plants, and controllable, limited resources for nest-building and foraging. Multiple infrared cameras and ultrasonic microphones record behavior even underground, giving high-resolution views of parenting in naturalistic conditions.
The project has two aims. The first studies how a colony of mice raises offspring. The second studies how two colonies sharing the same territory compete for resources such as food and water.
This is the kind of high-potential work that often struggles to find funding elsewhere. The project is otherwise unfunded, and BRF support will allow the team to collect pilot data to compete for a long-term NIH grant at the end of the project period. The work has already grown: Dr. Froemke’s BRF Lunch & Learn presentation covered how the research expanded into a large-scale project supported by NYU Langone.
What Can Studying Animal Families Teach Us About Human Caregiving?
Because humans and rodents are both communally living species, mouse families offer a practical model for the biology of parenting and cooperative caregiving. Studying them in naturalistic settings can show:
- How caregiving is shared: Recording whole colonies shows how adults divide the work of raising offspring, rather than looking only at a single parent and pup.
- How the brain responds during care: Recordings from oxytocin neurons link specific caregiving behaviors to activity in the brain in real time.
- How environment shapes behavior: Limited food, water, and nesting materials show how families adapt their caregiving under realistic pressure, including competition with neighboring groups.
Findings like these build the foundation for understanding the social brain in people, including why relationships and child rearing are so closely tied to human health and happiness.
Support Research Into the Neuroscience of Families
Breakthroughs in understanding how the brain supports family life start with funding for early-stage ideas that larger institutions often pass over. BRF’s Scientific Innovations Award and Seed Grants give researchers like Dr. Froemke the support to test new approaches, generate real data, and become competitive for larger, long-term funding. Your donation helps fund the next discovery about how the brain connects us to the people we care for.
Donate to Brain Research Foundation to help advance research into the neuroscience of families and social behavior.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the neuroscience of caregiving?
The neuroscience of caregiving studies how the brain drives behaviors like child rearing and pair bonding. Although these behaviors are central to mammalian social groups, little is known about the neural computations behind them, especially in complex natural environments.
What role does oxytocin play in parental and family bonding?
Oxytocin strengthens trust, increases prosocial behavior, and reinforces group affiliation, and it is released in both people during physical contact. BRF-funded researchers are recording oxytocin neurons in mouse families to learn how this system supports parental care.
Is caregiving instinctual or learned?
Researchers don’t yet have a full answer. Because most studies of caregiving have taken place in lab conditions, projects like Dr. Froemke’s are studying families in naturalistic environments to see how caregiving happens when animals behave spontaneously.
What can studying animal families teach us about human caregiving behavior?
Humans and rodents both live and raise offspring communally. Dr. Froemke’s BRF-funded research examines how adult mice work together to raise offspring and the role oxytocin plays in social bonding. That work provides a model for understanding the biology behind human family life.
