C. Sue Carter
Encyclopedia
C. Sue Carter is a biologist and behavioral neurobiologist. She is an internationally recognized expert in behavioral neuroendocrinology. She was the first person to identify the physiological mechanisms responsible for social monogamy
.
at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri. She completed a PhD in Zoology
at the University of Arkansas
in Fayetteville. In 2001, she joined the faculty of the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago
, where she is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Co-Director of The Brain-Body Center.
Carter is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
.
She is married to Stephen Porges, and has two children: Eric Carter Porges (currently a graduate student at the University of Chicago
in Integrative Neuroscience) in Jean Decety
's Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory and Seth Porges
(currently an editor at Maxim Magazine in New York City, and previously an editor at Popular Mechanics Magazine).
, vasopressin
, corticotropin-releasing hormone, and estrogen
. Her research program has discovered important new developmental functions for oxytocin and vasopressin, and implicated these hormones in the regulation of long-lasting neural and effects of early social experiences. She also has a long-standing concern regarding the consequences of medical manipulations for human development and parent-child interactions, including the use of “pitocin” to induce labor and consequences of breast feeding for the mother and child. Most recently she has been examining the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in mental disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, anxiety and depression. Carter is also known for research on the physiological basis of social behavior
, including studies that implicated oxytocin, vasopressin and hormones of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (“stress”) axis in the traits of monogamy
including pair-bond formation. She pioneered the physiological study of socially monogamous mammals, including the prairie vole. In collaboration with Lowell Getz, Carter documented the occurrence of social monogamy
in prairie voles. Her studies in rodents helped to lay the foundation for the studies of behavioral and developmental effects of oxytocin and vasopressin in humans which are in progress. In collaboration with Margaret Altemus she conducted some of the first studies documenting the importance of breast-feeding in the regulation of maternal physiology
.
and a recipient of the Matthew J. Wayner-NNOXe Pharmaceuticals Award for distinguished lifetime contributions to behavioral neuroscience.
Monogamy
Monogamy /Gr. μονός+γάμος - one+marriage/ a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. In current usage monogamy often refers to having one sexual partner irrespective of marriage or reproduction...
.
Background
Carter studied biologyBiology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri. She completed a PhD in Zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
at the University of Arkansas
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...
in Fayetteville. In 2001, she joined the faculty of the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...
, where she is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Co-Director of The Brain-Body Center.
Carter is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
.
She is married to Stephen Porges, and has two children: Eric Carter Porges (currently a graduate student at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
in Integrative Neuroscience) in Jean Decety
Jean Decety
Jean Decety is a neuroscientist and an internationally recognized expert on cognitive neuroscience and social neuroscience. His research focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning social cognition, particularly empathy, sympathy, emotional self-regulation and more generally...
's Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory and Seth Porges
Seth Porges
Seth Porges is an American science and technology journalist and television commentator, currently employed as a senior editor at Maxim magazine. Previously, he worked as an editor at Popular Mechanics magazine, and as the technology columnist at Bloomberg News...
(currently an editor at Maxim Magazine in New York City, and previously an editor at Popular Mechanics Magazine).
Academic achievements
Carter studies social bonding, male and female parental behavior, the social control of stress reactivity and the social control of reproduction, often using animal models such as the socially monogamous prairie vole. Carter’s research focuses on neuropeptide and steroid hormones, including oxytocinOxytocin
Oxytocin is a mammalian hormone that acts primarily as a neuromodulator in the brain.Oxytocin is best known for its roles in sexual reproduction, in particular during and after childbirth...
, vasopressin
Vasopressin
Arginine vasopressin , also known as vasopressin, argipressin or antidiuretic hormone , is a neurohypophysial hormone found in most mammals, including humans. Vasopressin is a peptide hormone that controls the reabsorption of molecules in the tubules of the kidneys by affecting the tissue's...
, corticotropin-releasing hormone, and estrogen
Estrogen
Estrogens , oestrogens , or œstrogens, are a group of compounds named for their importance in the estrous cycle of humans and other animals. They are the primary female sex hormones. Natural estrogens are steroid hormones, while some synthetic ones are non-steroidal...
. Her research program has discovered important new developmental functions for oxytocin and vasopressin, and implicated these hormones in the regulation of long-lasting neural and effects of early social experiences. She also has a long-standing concern regarding the consequences of medical manipulations for human development and parent-child interactions, including the use of “pitocin” to induce labor and consequences of breast feeding for the mother and child. Most recently she has been examining the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in mental disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, anxiety and depression. Carter is also known for research on the physiological basis of social behavior
Social behavior
In physics, physiology and sociology, social behavior is behavior directed towards society, or taking place between, members of the same species. Behavior such as predation which involves members of different species is not social...
, including studies that implicated oxytocin, vasopressin and hormones of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (“stress”) axis in the traits of monogamy
Monogamy
Monogamy /Gr. μονός+γάμος - one+marriage/ a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. In current usage monogamy often refers to having one sexual partner irrespective of marriage or reproduction...
including pair-bond formation. She pioneered the physiological study of socially monogamous mammals, including the prairie vole. In collaboration with Lowell Getz, Carter documented the occurrence of social monogamy
Monogamy
Monogamy /Gr. μονός+γάμος - one+marriage/ a form of marriage in which an individual has only one spouse at any one time. In current usage monogamy often refers to having one sexual partner irrespective of marriage or reproduction...
in prairie voles. Her studies in rodents helped to lay the foundation for the studies of behavioral and developmental effects of oxytocin and vasopressin in humans which are in progress. In collaboration with Margaret Altemus she conducted some of the first studies documenting the importance of breast-feeding in the regulation of maternal physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
.
Honors
Carter is a Fellow and Past-President of the International Behavioral Neuroscience SocietyInternational Behavioral Neuroscience Society
The International Behavioral Neuroscience Society , was founded in 1992. The goal of the IBNS is to "encourage research and education in the field of behavioral neuroscience". Its current president is D. Caroline Blanchard...
and a recipient of the Matthew J. Wayner-NNOXe Pharmaceuticals Award for distinguished lifetime contributions to behavioral neuroscience.
Selected publications
- Carter CS, Getz LL. (1993). Monogamy and the prairie vole. Scientific American, 268,100-106.
- Carter CS, Keverne EB. (2002) The neurobiology of social affiliation and pair bonding. In Hormones, Brain and Behavior, Edited by D. Pfaff, pp. 299–337, San Diego: Academic Press.
- Carter CS. (2003) Developmental consequences of oxytocin. Physiology and Behavior, 79, 383-397.
- Carter CS. (2007) Sex differences in oxytocin and vasopressin: Implications for autism spectrum disorders? Behavioural Brain Research. 176, 170-186.
- Goldman M, Marlow-O'Connor M, Torres I, Carter CS. (2008). Diminished plasma oxytocin in schizophrenic patients with neuroendocrine dysfunction and emotional deficits. Schizophrenia Research 98, 247-55.
- Carter CS, Grippo A J, Pournajafi-Nazarloo H, Ruscio MG, Porges SW (2008). Oxytocin, vasopressin and social behavior. Progress in Brain Research, 170, 331-336.
Books
- Carter, C. S. 1974. Hormones and Sexual Behavior. Dowden, Hutchinson, & Ross, Inc. In Benchmark Papers in Animal Behavior series.
- Carter, C. S., Lederhendler, I. I., and Kirkpatrick, B. 1997. The Integrative Neurobiology of Affiliation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 807. (Re-released by MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999).
- Uvnas-Moberg, K., and Carter, C. S. 1998. Special issue of Psychoneuroendocrinology : Proceedings of a Conference Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation: Stockholm, Sweden entitled “Is There a Neurobiology of Love?”
- Cacciopo, J, Berntson, G.G., Adolphs, R, Carter, C. S., Davidson, J., McClintock, M.K., McEwen, B. S. Meaney, M. J., Schacter, D. L., Sternberg, E. M., Suomi, S.S., Taylor, S.E., 2002. Foundations in Social Neuroscience. A Bradford Book, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
- Carter CS, Ahnert L, Grossmann K, Hrdy SB, Lamb M, Porges SW, & Sachser N. (eds). (2005) Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis. Cambridge: MIT Press.
See also
- Biological Psychology
- PsychiatryPsychiatryPsychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
- BiologyBiologyBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
- Neuropeptides
- NeuroscienceNeuroscienceNeuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
- LoveLoveLove is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
- EvolutionEvolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
- Social cognitionSocial cognitionSocial cognition is the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing, in the brain, of information relating to conspecifics, or members of the same species. At one time social cognition referred specifically to an approach to social psychology in which these processes were studied according to the...
- Social NeuroscienceSocial NeuroscienceSocial Neuroscience is the first academic journal dedicated to the topic of social neuroscience and was established in March 2006. It is published by the Psychology Press, a division of Taylor and Francis. The editor is University of Chicago neuroscientist Jean Decety...
External links
- University of Illinois at Chicago http://www.uic.edu/index.html/
- Sue Carter Laboratory web page http://www.psych.uic.edu/bbc/