Chemosensory Processing in Chemical Communication

超出提供的空间。对于大多数哺乳动物来说，化学交流是了解同类其他物种的重要信息来源。即使在人类中，同居的女性之间的月经同步也是基于气味线索进行潜意识交流的证据。许多记录较少的轶事表明，化学通信也可能在个人之间传递其他信息。在许多哺乳动物中，主要的嗅觉系统和辅助系统、犁鼻器及其相关的中枢神经通路共同作用，对行为有很大的影响。人类犁鼻器官功能的存在是值得怀疑的，但进化成处理犁鼻信息的大脑结构，即内侧和皮质内侧杏仁核，在人类大脑中仍然很突出，仍然接受化学感觉输入。这项提议描述了研究这些大脑区域功能的实验。这些研究的模型系统是导致雄性仓鼠繁殖和领土行为的化学交流。根据快速诱导基因c-fos的表达，在交配或雌性化学信号刺激期间，中央犁鼻神经通路及其连接的区域的激活是前脑中最明显的事件。来自雌性的化学感觉刺激和来自其他雄性的区域化学信号强烈地激活了雄性仓鼠的这一通路，包括杏仁内侧前核和后内侧核。初步数据表明，来自其他物种的化学感觉刺激在生物学上具有重要意义，但与仓鼠没有“社会”相关性，它强烈激活了该通路的一个分支(杏仁内侧前核)的第一阶段，但这种激活不会传递到下一个大脑区域(杏仁内侧后核)。通过电刺激或兴奋性药物人工刺激犁鼻通路，也能激活杏仁内侧前核，但不能激活后内侧杏仁核。我们将测试这样一种假设，即杏仁核中有一个功能过滤器，根据输入信息的社会相关性，选择输入信息通过杏仁内侧后部进行传递和处理。副嗅球是系统中的PDOR中继器，对相同的刺激表现出不同的选择性。我们将使用电生理学和c-LOS基因表达来证实这些反应的选择性，并调查激活的空间和时间模式，或某些类别细胞的激活是否可能是机制。Performance Site========================================Section End===========================================

EXCEED THE SPACE PROVIDED. For most mammals, chemical communication is an important source of information about others of the same species. Even in humans, the well-documented menstrual synchrony among women living together is evidence for subliminal communication based on odor cues. Numerous less well-documented anecdotes suggest that chemical communication may also carry other information between individuals. In many mammals, the main olfactory system and an accessory system, the vomeronasal organ and its associated central neural pathways, act together and have a large influence on behavior. The presence of functional vomeronasal organs in humans is questionable but the brain structures evolved to process vomeronasal information, the medial and cortico-medial amygdala, are still prominent in the human brain and still receive chemosensory input. This proposal describes experiments to investigate the function of these brain regions. The model system for these studies is the chemical communication that leads to male hamster reproductive and territorial behavior. Activation of the central vomeronasal neural pathway and the regions it connects to, are the most obvious events in the forebrain during mating or stimulation with female chemosignals - as assessed by the expression of the rapidly induced gene c-fos. Chemosensory stimuli from females and territorial chemical-signals from other males strongly activate this pathway in male hamsters, including both the anterior and posterior medial amygdala. Preliminary data suggest that chemo-sensory stimuli from other species, biologically important but with no "social" relevance for hamsters, strongly activate the first stage of one branch of the pathway (anterior medial amygdala), but that activation is not passed on to the next brain region (posterior medial amygdala). Artificial stimulation of the vomeronasal pathway by electrical stimulation or an excitatory drug also activates anterior but not posterior medial amygdala. We will test the hypothesis that there is a "functional filter in the amygdala that selects input information for onward transmission and processing by posterior medial amygdala on the basis of its social relevance. The accessory olfactory bulb, a pdor relay in the system, appears differently selectivity for the same stimuli. We will use electrophysiology and c-los gene expression to confirm these selectivities of response and to investigate whether spatial and temporal patterns of activation, or the activation of certain classes of cells, could be the mechanism. PERFORMANCE SITE ========================================Section End===========================================