C. Sue Carter
Kinsey Institute
Expert Bio
C. Sue Carter is the Rudy Professor Emerita of Biology and director emerita of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. She 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. She was the first person to detect and define the physiology of monogamy through her research on the prairie vole.
Carter’s research focuses on neuropeptide and steroid hormones, including oxytocin, vasopressin, corticotropin-releasing hormone and estrogen. Her program has discovered important developmental functions for oxytocin and vasopressin and implicated these hormones in the regulation of long-lasting neural and effects of early social experiences.
Areas of Expertise
Hormones and behavior; Oxytocin and birth; biology of social bonding; and animal models of social behavior.
Other Information
Carter also has held professorships in psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to these positions she was a distinguished university professor in biology at the University of Maryland, and earlier was a professor of psychology and ecology, ethology and evolution at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.