Meeting Abstract

61.3  Sunday, Jan. 5 14:00  Prior experience with conspecific signals enhances auditory midbrain responsiveness to conspecific vocalizations GALL, MD*; WILCZYNSKI, W; Vassar College; Georgia State University megall@vassar.edu

There is a long history in neuroethology of investigating how communication signals influence the brain and behavior. It has become increasingly clear that brain areas associated with sensory processing are plastic in adults and that this plasticity is related to reproductive condition. However, the role of communication signal reception in adult auditory plasticity has received relatively little attention. Here we investigated whether the reception of communication signals (a frog chorus) could enhance the responsiveness of the auditory system to future reception of communication signals (a single male call). We found that animals that had been exposed to ten days of a male chorus had stronger auditory midbrain responses to a male call than animals that had been exposed to ten days of random tones. Moreover, this enhanced responsiveness appears to be specific to communication signals, as there was no difference between the chorus exposed and tones exposed groups in midbrain responsiveness to a single tone stimulus. Our results suggest that exposure to dynamic social stimuli, like frog choruses, may play an important role in shaping the neural and behavioral responses to communication signals.