Control of aggression by biogenic amines in crickets

动物对同类的攻击行为受到许多社会和其他经验的影响。本项目旨在确定生物胺（主要是章鱼胺和血清素）在雄性蟋蟀的经验依赖攻击性可塑性中的致病作用。这将为在一个相对简单的动物模型系统中使攻击行为适应个体需求和社会约束的机制提供一般的见解。在完整的自由行为蟋蟀中，我们的目标是量化居住，赢，输，隔离和拥挤对攻击性的影响，并研究注射胺和胺能药物如何影响这一点。类似地，但现在在神经元水平上，我们将研究局部注射胺能药物如何调节已确定的脑间神经元对激动性，攻击性诱导刺激（机械触角刺激）的反应性。通过将递质免疫细胞化学与传统的神经元示踪相结合，我们将确定机械感觉触角神经堆中有投射的候选胺能神经元，并研究这些神经元如何调节所研究的中间神经元。通过将胺能多样性的空间关系映射到传入突触与所研究的中间神经元，我们将深入了解胺作为复杂行为的全局通用或局部专用调节剂的作用程度。

The aggressive behavior expressed by animals towards members of their own species is influenced by numerous social and other experiences. The project proposed here aims to establish the causative role of biogenic amines (primarily octopamine and serotonin) in experience-dependent plasticity of aggression in male crickets. This will provide general insights into the mechanisms that adapt aggressive behaviour to individual needs and social constraints, in a comparatively simple animal model system. In intact freely behaving crickets we aim to quantify the influences of residency, winning, losing, isolation and crowding on aggressiveness, and investigate how this is influenced by injecting amines and aminergic drugs. Similarly, but now at the neuronal level, we will investigate how local injection of aminergic drugs modulate the responsiveness of identified brain interneurones to an agonistic, aggression-inducing stimulus (mechanical antennal stimulation). By combining transmitter immunocytochemistry with conventional neurone tracing we will identify candidate aminergic neurones with projections in mechanosensory antennal neuropile, and investigate how these neurones modulate the investigated interneurones. By mapping the spatial relationships of aminergic varicosities to afferent synapses with the studied interneurones we will gain insights into the extent to which amines function as global-general or local-dedicated modulators of complex behavior.