Effects of maternal care of young on their subsequent expression of ERα (ESR1) mRNA in the MPOA as adults. Females cross-fostered from a high or low licking-grooming (LG) mother to a low LG mother, had equivalent levels of ERα mRNA and had less ER expression in the MPOA than females cross-fostered from a high or low LG to a high LG mother. The original mother is designated on the left and the cross fostered mother on the right of hyphenated terms, i.e. low-low. Adapted with Permission from Champagne, F.A., Weaver, I.C.G., Diorio, J., Dymov, S., Szyf, M., Meaney, M., 2006. Maternal care associated with methylation of the estrogen receptor-α1b promoter and estrogen receptor-α expression in the medial preoptic area of female offspring. Endocrinology 147, 2909–2915, with permission from The Endocrine Society.