This project seeks to understand the genetic organization of visual approach preferences in Japanese quail chicks (C. coturnix japonica), and to determine the roles of the genotype in the sensory mediation, environmental determination, and cerebral representation of these preferences. Specific studies include: (1) Identifying how major genes and genetic interactions determine extreme variations of unconditional color preferences. (2) Artificially selecting quail for and determining the genetic organization of unconditional pattern preferences. (3) Determining how the major genes that are responsible for unconditional color and pattern preferences may interact with each other and are controlled by variables of the background genotype. (4) Determining the quail's luminosity and wavelength discrimination functions, and relating it to genetically variable color preferences. (5) Identifying the variations of visual pigments, pigmented oil droplets, and the receptor architectonics of the quail retina, also in relation to genetically variable color preferences. (6) Determining how the genetically variable unconditional preferences and artificially selected """"""""Hi"""""""" or """"""""Lo"""""""" learning capacities of the quail may influence the speed and stimulus specificities of imprinting, and how such influences may transfer to learning situations other than imprinting. (7) Identifying specific similarities and differences between the cerebral representation of genetically variable unconditional preference phenotypes and their environmental phenocopies. Procedures of investigation included artificial selection of quail for unconditional stimulus preferences and genetically variable imprinting effects, genetic analysis of the selected populations, psychophysical determination of visual sensitivities microspectrophotometric assessment of the absorption spectra of visual pigments and pigmented retinal oil droplets, and autoradiographic identification of brain areas that are activated by stimuli of genetically and/or environmentally variable preference values. In addition to clarifying the genetic organization, sensory mediation and cerebral representation of the quail's unconditional and acquired stimulus preferences, these procedures will also identify the function of retinal oil droplets in avian color vision and will test a model of gene expression pertinent to the conceptualization and general study of gene effects in behavioral disorders.
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