Integration of Salient Multimodal Social Signals and Internal Physiological State

动物同时通过多种感官感知周围环境，这使它们能够在不同的环境中做出适当的行为决定。然而，以前大多数关于感官知觉和行为表达之间联系的研究都只关注个体的感觉系统。该项目在路易斯安那州立大学进行，在生物组织的多个层面上使用综合方法，以进一步了解大脑如何处理多模态（视觉和听觉）感官信息，以及如何将这种感知与生殖环境中的行为输出联系起来。实验将在非洲慈鲷鱼中进行，其中色彩鲜艳的占主导地位的雄性进行视觉上显眼的求偶展示，并结合声音吸引雌性产卵。这种多模态信息是如何被接受的女性使用的仍然是未知的。这项工作的结果将推进我们目前对多模态信号和感知的功能和进化的理解，这对所有物种在不断变化的世界中的生存和持久性至关重要。该项目还将为EPSCoR管辖范围内的妇女和代表性不足的本科生和研究生提供研究和培训机会，为公众和其他研究科学家提供科学网络资源，并为本科课程编制课程。本项目的目标是识别和表征基于接收显著多模态信号介导生殖行为决策的神经基质。利用以前的感官研究在一个既定的非洲慈鲷鱼模型，Astatolapia burtoni，这项工作结合了行为，细胞和分子分析，以促进我们的理解如何多模态（视觉和听觉）信号在大脑中的接收器。此外，它将研究如何感知这一显着的信息是由动物的生殖状态的影响。立即早期基因表达将被用作神经激活的代理，以确定在女性大脑中的多模态信号从求爱男性处理，并测试女性生殖状态是否影响神经激活模式。补充实验将确定的作用，作为社会显着的多模态信号和生殖状态的整合中心的下丘脑前脑。这项工作结合了在体内的电生理和基因表达分析，以测试的假设，腹侧端脑在求爱过程中的视觉-听觉处理中发挥作用。在相同的大脑区域使用这两种不同的技术分析多模态反应将产生新的措施，转录和生理激活相同的上下文信息。这项工作的结果将改变以前概述的多模态通信理论的行为分类方案，并将被用作推进该领域的框架，同时为从K-12到大学的学生提供推广和培训机会。

Animals perceive their surroundings through many senses simultaneously, which allows them to make appropriate behavioral decisions in different contexts. Most previous research on the link between sensory perception and behavior expression, however, has focused solely on individual sensory systems. This project, performed at Louisiana State University, uses an integrative approach at multiple levels of biological organization to further our understanding of how the brain processes multimodal (visual and acoustic) sensory information, and how it links this perception to behavioral outputs in reproductive contexts. Experiments will be performed in an African cichlid fish, in which brightly-colored dominant males perform visually-conspicuous courtship displays combined with sounds to attract females for spawning. How this multimodal information is used by receptive females remains unexplored. Results of this work will advance our current understanding of the function and evolution of multimodal signaling and perception that is crucial for all species survival and persistence in a changing world. This project will also provide research and training opportunities for women and underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students in an EPSCoR jurisdiction, science web-resources for the public and other research scientists, and curriculum development for undergraduate courses. The goal of this project is to identify and characterize the neural substrates mediating reproductive behavioral decisions based on reception of salient multimodal signals. Capitalizing on previous sensory research in an established African cichlid fish model, Astatotilapia burtoni, this work combines behavioral, cellular, and molecular analyses to advance our understanding of how multimodal (visual and acoustic) signals are represented in the brain of a receiver. Further, it will examine how perception of this salient information is influenced by an animal's reproductive state. Immediate early gene expression will be used as a proxy for neural activation to determine where in the female brain multimodal signals from courting males are processed, and to test whether female reproductive state influences neural activation patterns. Complementary experiments will determine the role of the subpallial forebrain as an integration center for socially-salient multimodal signals and reproductive state. This work combines in vivo electrophysiology and gene expression analyses to test the hypothesis that the ventral telencephalon plays a role in visual-acoustic processing during courtship. Analysis of multimodal responses using these two different techniques in the same brain regions will generate novel measures of both transcriptional and physiological activation to the same contextual information. Results of this work will transform previously outlined behavioral classification schemes of multimodal communication theory and will be used as a framework to advance the field, while simultaneously providing outreach and training opportunities for students from K-12 through college.