Brain Activation Patterns in Response to Conspecific and Heterospecific Social Acoustic Signals in Female Plainfin Midshipman Fish, < b > < i > Porichthys notatus < /i > < /b >

While the peripheral auditory system of fish has been well studied, less is known about how the fish ’s brain and central auditory system process complex social acoustic signals. The plainfin midshipman fish,Porichthys notatus, has become a good species for investigating the neural basis of acoustic communication because the production and reception of acoustic signals is paramount for this species ’ reproductive success. Nesting males produce long-duration advertisement calls that females detect and localize among the noise in the intertidal zone to successfully find mates and spawn. How female midshipman are able to discriminate male advertisement calls from environmental noise and other a coustic stimuli is unknown. Using the immediate early gene product cFos as a marker for neural activity, we quantified neural activation of the ascending auditory pathway in female midshipman exposed to conspecific advertisement calls, heterospecific white seabass calls, or ambient environment noise . We hypothesized that auditory hindbrain nuclei would be activated by general acoustic stimuli (ambient noise and other biotic acoustic stimuli) whereas auditory neurons in the midbrain and forebrain would be selectively activated by conspecific advertisement calls. We show that neural activation i n two regions of the auditory hindbrain, i.e., the rostral intermediate division of the descending octaval nucleus and the ventral division of the secondary octaval nucleus, did not differ via ...
Source: Brain, Behavior and Evolution - Category: Neurology Source Type: research