Behavioral Neuroendocrinology of Vocal Communication

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

Steroid hormones exert powerful effects on a wide range of mechanisms ranging from development and reproduction to cognition and the establishment of social hierarchies. The new studies proposed here will identify the cellular and molecular events that mediate rapid steroid actions on nerve cells (neurons) that directly generate behavior, in this case vocalizations that are essential for social communication. Long-term influences of steroids on the development and maintenance of vocal behaviors and neurons is well known, but their short-term actions is both unexpected and essentially unexplored. The vocal control system of teleost fish presents the most basic example of how the central nervous system of vertebrates produces social, context-dependent vocalizations. The PI has discovered that androgens, estrogen and cortisol (the major "stress" steroid in teleost fish) induce rapid changes in the output of vocal neurons that parallel the time course of steroid effects on natural calling behaviors. This now provides a model to study the physiological basis for rapid steroid effects on neurons that directly lead to changes in a social behavior. Neurophysiological, molecular and behavioral methods will be used to show how steroids shape neuronal function, where the receptors that mediate these effects are located, and how vocal behaviors are influenced by one or more steroids. The principles identified apply to other vertebrates because vocal, neural and endocrine mechanisms are evolutionarily conserved between teleosts and other groups, including birds and mammals. This research has, and will continue to, train undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students of both sexes from diverse cultural backgrounds and geographic regions and make the results of the research easily accessible to the general public through publications, press interviews and presentations at professional societies, universities, marine biology laboratories and local community science centers.