Meeting Abstract
P2.184 Saturday, Jan. 5 Exposure to Conspecific Mate Calls Increases cFos Response in Catecholaminergic Neurons and Vocal-Acoustic Circuitry in Male Midshipman Fish PETERSEN, C.L.*; TIMOTHY, M; KIM, S; BHANDIWAD, A.A.; MOHR, R.A.; SISNEROS, J.A.; FORLANO, P.M.; CUNY, Brooklyn College ; CUNY, Brooklyn College ; CUNY, Brooklyn College ; Univ. of Washington, Seattle ; Univ. of Washington, Seattle ; Univ. of Washington, Seattle ; CUNY, Brooklyn College cpetersen@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Male plainfin midshipman fish, Poricthys notatus, establish nests under rocks in close proximity to one another and vocally court females by producing long duration advertisement calls. Here we test the hypothesis that males who hear the calls of other males should show increased colocalization of cFos, an immediate early gene product used as a marker for neural activation, with catecholaminergic (CA) neurons which are known to regulate both arousal and motivation in the CNS of other vertebrates. We examined the ascending auditory pathway and two vocal-acoustic integration sites for increased neural activation in sound stimulus versus control males. We collected males during low tide and subjected them to the playback of advertisement calls for 30 minutes. Control males were subjected to ambient noise (no sound stimulus) for 30 minutes. All males were sacrificed, and their brains labeled by double immunofluorescence for tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) the rate limiting enzyme in CA synthesis and cFos. Males exposed to the mate calls showed significantly greater colocalization of cFos in TH-ir cells in the noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) and the dopaminergic periventricular posterior tuberculum (TPp), as well as increased cFos-ir in several levels of the auditory/vocal-acoustic pathway. Increased activation of TH-ir neurons in LC and TPp could underlie motivational state changes in listening males, and these results may provide insight to the role of these neuromodulators in teleost social behavior and in social acoustic behavior across vertebrates.
