Trost Lisa, Gahr Manfred, Ter Maat Andries
Department of Behavioural Neurobiology, Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, Seewiesen, Germany.
Eur J Neurosci. 2025 May;61(9):e70123. doi: 10.1111/ejn.70123.
Female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) are unable to sing because of the vestigial development of forebrain song control areas such as the RA (nucleus robustus archistriatalis), a premotor nucleus of the song control pathway. In male zebra finches, RA is also involved in call-based vocal communication in addition to song control. Here, we monitored the activity of RA neurons during vocal communication in freely behaving females using a miniaturized telemetric recording device combined with telemetric audio recording. Neurons in the RA region showed premotor activity associated with stack and tet calls, two innate short-range social calls produced by both sexes. RA units were active when females called to respond to a male partner's call or to initiate a partner's call. However, spontaneous, regularly firing units, typical of male RA, were very rare in females or, when found, showed no association with vocal output. Despite the small number of adult female RA neurons, these neurons are not functionless, but are involved in call-based communication.
雌性斑胸草雀（Taeniopygia guttata）由于前脑歌曲控制区域（如RA，古纹状体粗核，歌曲控制通路的一个运动前核）发育不全而无法唱歌。在雄性斑胸草雀中，除了歌曲控制外，RA还参与基于叫声的声音交流。在这里，我们使用小型遥测记录设备结合遥测音频记录，监测了自由活动的雌性斑胸草雀在声音交流过程中RA神经元的活动。RA区域的神经元表现出与堆叠叫声和tet叫声相关的运动前活动，这是两性都会发出的两种先天近距离社交叫声。当雌性斑胸草雀回应雄性伴侣的叫声或引发伴侣的叫声时，RA神经元会活跃。然而，自发、有规律放电的神经元，这在雄性RA中很典型，在雌性中非常罕见，或者即便发现，也与声音输出无关。尽管成年雌性RA神经元数量较少，但这些神经元并非没有功能，而是参与基于叫声的交流。
