Neuroendocrine Regulation of Behavioral Differences

该项目将研究造成睾酮反应行为差异的机制。 即使在单一物种中，这些差异也存在于多个层面，包括行为功能、肌肉大小以及产生行为的神经系统部分。 例如，在绿变色龙中，这种激素比雌性更能促进雄性的繁殖行为，并且在雄性繁殖期间比非繁殖季节更能促进雄性的繁殖行为。 睾酮还会增加某些生殖结构的大小，但不会增加其他生殖结构的大小，而在受其影响的结构中，在繁殖季节反应最为强烈。 实验旨在检验这样的观点：这些解剖学和行为上的差异是由于一个或多个特定因素造成的，包括大脑中启动激素雌二醇的可用性，以及四种特定基因中一个或多个的表达。 因此，行为、解剖、激素和分子方法被用来增强对决定激素是否起作用以及作用程度的理解。 这项工作将提供有关这种尚未充分理解的基本生物现象的新信息，部分原因是所使用的蜥蜴提供了一组独特的大型结构和功能，可以在其中仔细整合信息。 由于此类工作很少在爬行动物中进行，因此它也将提供新的比较和进化视角。 该研究由处于多个职业阶段的学生进行：本科生、研究生和博士后，并在首席研究员的直接指导下进行。 目前，所有这些人都是女性，从而影响了后代的科学家，而这些女性反过来也将成为神经科学领域其他女性的榜样。

This project will investigate the mechanisms that create behavioral differences in responsiveness to testosterone. These differences exist at multiple levels even in a single species, including behavioral function, the size of muscles, and parts of the nervous system that generate the behaviors. For example, in green anole lizards, this hormone facilitates reproductive behaviors in males more so than in females, and within males to a greater degree in the breeding than during the non-breeding season. Testosterone also increases the sizes of some reproductive structures, but not others, and among those it affects, the response is greatest during the breeding season. Experiments are designed to test the ideas that these differences in anatomy and behavior are due to one or more specific factors, including the availability of a priming hormone, estradiol, in the brain, and the expression of one or more of four specific genes. Thus, behavioral, anatomical, hormonal and molecular approaches are used to enhance the understanding of what determines whether and to what degree a hormone will act. This work will provide novel information on this basic biological phenomenon, which is not yet sufficiently understood, in part because the lizards to be used provide a uniquely large set of structures and functions across which the information can be carefully integrated. Since very little work of this kind is conducted in reptiles, it will also provide a new comparative, evolutionary perspective. The research is conducted by students at multiple career stages: undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral students, under direct mentorship of the Principal Investigator. At present, all of these individuals are women, thus impacting future generations of scientists and these woman, in turn, will be role models for other women in the neurosciences.