Spinal Mechanisms of Avian Reproduction

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Great progress is being made on understanding exactly how sex steroids act on the nervous system to yield adaptive behavior and physiology that serves to promote reproductive success. Dr. Adkins-Regan is performing experiments on birds which investigates the spinal level neuroendocrine processes. This work will contribute to our understanding of the role of testosterone metabolites in androgenic actions on the nervous system. Dr. Adkins-Regan has data that show that these sex steroids change the dendritic arborizations of motor neurons. This finding has ramifications for neuronal plasticity in the adult. This work is important because there is increasing recognition that in addition to specific reproduction related effects on the nervous system such as the production of sexual dimorphism, sex hormones may have more general trophic effects on neural development. Neuroendocrinology is a tremendously fast moving field, and its study should yield many new findings regarding the physiology of human behavior.