“…In some social rodents, fathers play an important role in offspring development, and paternal care, like maternal care, remarkably alters social behaviors and emotional functions such as physical growth [4,5,6,7], juvenile play/fighting [8], aggressive behavior [9], social recognition [10] and cognitive development [11], anxiety levels and sociability [12,13], pair bonding [14] and parental behavior in adulthood [12,13]. Paternal deprivation (PD) produces significant changes in the related neural substrate and it is thought that alterations in behavior are associated with depressed arginine vasopressin levels in the anterior hypothalamus [8], less oxytocin receptor mRNA expression in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) [10], altered mRNA expression of dopamine-1-type receptor (D1R) and D2R in the NAcc [14], increased OT content and greater dorsal raphe corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF)-2 densities [15] and reduction of estrogen receptor-α expression in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), medial preoptic area, ventromedial nucleus of hypothalamus and arcuate hypothalamic nucleus [13].…”