Meeting Abstract
61.5 Thursday, Jan. 6 Song Perception in Female Songbirds: How do They Avoid Errors in Song Discrimination? LYNCH, K.S.*; BALL, G.F.; Johns Hopkins University lynchks@mail.utexas.edu
The decision to mate and with whom to mate is one of the most consequential decisions a female is faced with in her lifetime. Thus, they must possess a suite of perceptual processes that aid in correct discrimination of conspecific male signals. We examine these processes in two separate studies. In the first study, we lesion HVC in female canaries (Serinus canarius) and examine immediate early gene (IEG) induction within three regions of the auditory forebrain: caudalmedial mesopallium (CMM) and the ventral and dorsal caudalmedial nidopallium (vNCM and dNCM respectively). A classic study revealed that HVC lesions in female canaries caused deficits in discrimination between conspecific and heterospecific songs. However, converging evidence indicates that song discrimination resides within the songbird auditory forebrain. Here, we repeat the HVC lesion study followed by an examination of ZENK (an IEG) within the auditory forebrain. Our results unite these studies and provide key evidence for the role of HVC in song perception. In the second study, we examine Arc (activity related cytoskeletal protein), an IEG in which the mRNA migrates through the neuron and can be tracked through time. We present female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) with pairs of songs and examine Arc induction using catFISH approach (compartmental analysis of temporal activity using florescent in situ hybridization). Our results reveal that individual neurons in CMM encode conspecific songs as compared to all other songs or sounds (i.e. reversed conspecific, heterospecific and noise). Furthermore, CMM cells facilitate discrimination of song types whereas dNCM cells aid in recognition of song from non-song. Together these studies provide a basis for understanding the perceptual systems involved in song discrimination in female songbirds.
