Prolactin hormone activates brain reward pathway for maternal bonding

In the hours after birth, a mother's brain does not simply respond to her newborn — it is chemically reorganized to make caregiving feel like a reward rather than a burden. Researchers at the University of Otago have traced this transformation to a specific neural pathway activated by prolactin, the hormone of milk production, which reaches into the brain's dopamine reward center and reorients the mother's inner world toward her infant. For the one in five mothers in Aotearoa New Zealand who experience peripartum mood disorders, this discovery offers something rarer than a treatment: a truthfu