Control of aggression by biogenic amines in crickets

动物对自己物种成员的攻击行为受到许多社交及其他经验的影响。这里提出的项目旨在建立生物胺（主要是章鱼胺和5-羟色胺）在雄性蟋蟀侵略的经验依赖性可塑性中的致病作用。这将在一个相对简单的动物模型系统中，为适应个体需求和社会约束的攻击行为机制提供一般性的见解。在完整的自由行为的蟋蟀，我们的目标是量化的影响，居住，赢，输，隔离和拥挤的侵略性，并调查这是如何影响注射胺和胺能药物。类似地，但现在在神经元水平，我们将研究如何局部注射胺能药物调制的反应，确定脑interneurones激动，侵略诱导刺激（机械触角刺激）。通过将递质免疫细胞化学与传统的神经元示踪相结合，我们将确定候选的胺能神经元与预测mechanosensory触角神经堆，并研究这些神经元如何调节所调查的interneurons。通过映射的空间关系的胺能静脉曲张传入突触与研究的interneurons，我们将获得深入了解胺功能的复杂行为的全球通用或本地专用调制器的程度。

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.