Like many animals, songbirds put on their reproductive song and dance routine each spring: Male birds perform their finest songs, and female birds respond, hormonally prepped for the breeding season. In this research, Emory neuroscientist Donna Maney examined the auditory areas of the brain to see how estrogen affects the selectivity of song-induced gene expression. Dubbed the "genomic response," this is a highly specific process wherein genes are turned on to perform as they're programmed.
"Our work suggests that estrogen, which is normally high only during the breeding season, may actually alter auditory pathways and centers," Maney says. "The changes in gene expression reflect changes in the brain that are related to auditory learning and attention."
In the study, published in the current issue of the European Journal of Neuroscience, Maney and her research group compared estrogen-treated female white-throated sparrows with females not treated with hormones. The birds listened to recordings of either seductive male song or synthetic, frequency-matched beeps.
The birds reacted as expected to the songs, with the hormone-treated females responding by performing their mating moves -- known as "copulation solicitation" -- whereas the untreated females remained unimpressed and did not respond with courtship displays. Both groups essentially ignored the beeps. Although the genomic response in the auditory systems of the hormone-treated females was much higher in response to song than to beeps, as expected, in the untreated females it was the same for th
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Contact: Beverly Cox Clark
beverly.clark@emory.edu
404-712-8780
Emory University Health Sciences Center
3-May-2006