Skip Navigation



Chemical Senses Advance Access published online on April 10, 2007
Chemical Senses, doi:10.1093/chemse/bjm015
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
32/5/463    most recent
bjm015v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Guo, Z.
Right arrow Articles by Holy, T. E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Guo, Z.
Right arrow Articles by Holy, T. E.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2007 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Sex Selectivity of Mouse Ultrasonic Songs

Zhongsheng Guo and Timothy E. Holy

Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, 660 South Euclid Avenue, Campus Box 8108, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO 63110, USA

Correspondence to be sent to: Timothy E. Holy, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, 660 South Euclid Avenue, Campus Box 8108, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO 63110, USA. e-mail: holy{at}wustl.edu


  Abstract

In many species, reproduction requires detecting, recognizing, and courting a potential mate. Progress through these stages is guided by cues involving a wide range of sensory systems. Here we explore the tasks of detection, recognition, and response in terms of the ultrasonic songs of male mice presented with odor cues contained in urine. We find that the quantity of singing, more so than specific features of the songs, varies depending upon the odor cue. For experienced male mice, responses to female odor cues depend only on the concentration of female cues and are independent of the presence of male cues. However, for naive mice, male cues appear to be synergistic for the response to female cues. We therefore find no direct behavioral evidence for a role of opponent neural processing, such as lateral inhibition, in distinguishing sex by olfactory cues. However, modeling demonstrates that lateral inhibition could be one possible mechanism to account for the switch from synergy to independence.

Key words: lateral inhibition, olfaction, opponency, psychophysics, sex recognition

Accepted 23 February 2007


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.