Successful reproduction requires an animal to coordinate its physiological state with behavioral cues provided by potential mates. The present proposal will provide new insight into how the brain controls appropriate behavioral responses to specific social cues by exploring female responses to male courtship song in a songbird model system. Female mate choice decisions have been intensively studied by evolutionary biologists, behavioral ecologists, and ethologists, but little is known about how the brain controls this crucial social behavior. Female songbirds use attributes of male song to select mates. Female responses to male courtship song likely involve interactions between brain regions responding to song and those regulating social behavior. Neurochemicals, including norepinephrine and dopamine, regulate behaviors critical for mate choice such as arousal, attention, and approach behaviors and are likely involved in activating and integrating networks of brain regions involved in female responses to mate cues. Pharmacological manipulations of norepinephrine and dopamine and measures of behavior and other neural attributes will provide insight into how these neurochemicals regulate female preferences for specific male songs. This project will identify basic mechanisms regulating responses to mate cues and promote the understanding of how hormones and the brain control the perception of social cues, appropriate behavioral responding, and reproductive behavior. These studies link two currently disparate fields of research (research on song processing and social motivation), a step that is necessary to understand how the brain regulates complex social behaviors. In addition, this research provides broad training experience for students spanning the disciplines of animal behavior and behavioral neuroendocrinology. This project will offer unique research opportunities for graduate, undergraduate, and high school students, and will promote training of under-represented minorities.
