Neuroendocrine Regulation of Behavioral Differences

这个项目将研究对睾酮反应的行为差异产生的机制。即使在单一物种中，这些差异也存在于多个层面上，包括行为功能、肌肉的大小和产生行为的神经系统部分。例如，在绿色变态蜥蜴中，这种激素对雄性的生殖行为的促进作用比对雌性的促进作用更大，在繁殖过程中对雄性的促进作用比在非繁殖季节更大。睾丸激素也会增加一些生殖结构的大小，但不会增加其他生殖结构的大小，在那些它所影响的结构中，在繁殖季节反应最大。实验旨在验证这样一种观点，即这些解剖和行为上的差异是由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获得性，以及四个特定基因中的一个或多个的表达。因此，行为学、解剖学、荷尔蒙和分子方法被用来加强对什么决定荷尔蒙是否起作用以及作用到什么程度的理解。这项工作将提供关于这一基本生物现象的新信息，这一现象尚未被充分了解，部分原因是将使用的蜥蜴提供了一套独特的大型结构和功能，信息可以仔细地整合在这些结构和功能上。由于这类工作很少在爬行动物身上进行，这也将提供一个新的比较、进化的视角。这项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，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，因此影响了未来几代科学家，而这些女性反过来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.