Mother-infant bonding develops rapidly following parturition and is accompanied by changes in sensory perception and behavior. Here, we study how ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are represented in the brain of mothers. Using a mouse line that allows temporally controlled genetic access to active neurons, we find that the temporal association cortex (TeA) in mothers exhibits robust USV responses. Rabies tracing from USV-responsive neurons reveals extensive subcortical and cortical inputs into TeA. A particularly dominant cortical source of inputs is the primary auditory cortex (A1), suggesting strong A1-to-TeA connectivity. Chemogenetic silencing of USV-responsive neurons in TeA impairs auditory-driven maternal preference in a pup-retrieval assay. Furthermore, dense extracellular recordings from awake mice reveal changes of both single-neuron and population responses to USVs in TeA, improving discriminability of pup calls in mothers compared with naive females. These data indicate that TeA plays a key role in encoding and perceiving pup cries during motherhood.

母婴关系在分娩后迅速发展，并伴随着感官知觉和行为的变化。在这里，我们研究了超声波发声 (USV) 在母亲大脑中的表现。使用允许对活跃神经元进行时间控制的遗传访问的小鼠系，我们发现母亲的时间关联皮层 (TeA) 表现出强大的 USV 反应。来自 USV 反应神经元的狂犬病追踪揭示了对 TeA 的大量皮层下和皮层输入。一个特别占主导地位的皮质输入源是初级听觉皮层 (A1)，表明 A1 到 TeA 的连接性很强。在幼崽检索试验中，TeA 中 USV 响应神经元的化学遗传沉默会损害听觉驱动的母体偏好。此外，来自清醒小鼠的密集细胞外记录揭示了单神经元和群体对 TeA 中 USV 的反应的变化，与幼稚的雌性相比，提高了母亲对幼崽呼叫的辨别力。这些数据表明，TeA 在母性期间编码和感知幼犬的哭声中起着关键作用。