Sweet Mother Monkey Milk Cortisol Reloaded
Mother’s milk is more than a food full of essential nutrients and more than a medicine packed with protective immunofactors. Mother’s milk contains signals- hormones of maternal origin- that influence infant metabolism, neurobiology, and behavior. Profs Frank “Skip” Bartol and Carol Bagnell coined the term “lactocrine programming” to describe the effects of these hormones in the baby. Wonderfully covered by Carl Zimmer for the NYT , is the sequel to our 2011 monkey milk cortisol paper . And like all self-respecting sequels, we had to pack in more special effects (new predictors & outcomes!), an expanded cast of characters (N>100!), and an extended run-time (longitudinal data!). Monkey Milk Cortisol Reloaded original photo by Alex Georgiev In other words, we collected milk at multiple time-points across lactation, measured FOOD & SIGNAL in milk (available milk energy AND cortisol) and correlated these milk features with infant growth AND temperament. And th