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Hearing and Hormones: Paying Homage to the Comparative Approach

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Hearing and Hormones

Part of the book series: Springer Handbook of Auditory Research ((SHAR,volume 57))

Abstract

This volume on Hearing and Hormones for the Springer Handbook of Auditory Research (SHAR) series provides a broad comparative overview of hormonal influences on the behavioral and neural mechanisms of hearing in vertebrates. The chapters provide coverage for each of the major lineages of vocal vertebrates that have been foci of investigations of hearing and hormones, namely teleost fishes, amphibians, birds, and mammals, including humans. As reviewed in this chapter, a contemporary approach to asking how hormones affect the sense of hearing was triggered, in part, by the introduction of autoradiographic methods to map the location and abundance of steroid concentrating cells in the brain of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Since that time, an armamentarium of other investigative tools ranging from underwater acoustics to single neuron recordings and in situ hybridization to identify patterns of gene expression have complemented these earlier methods to elucidate mechanisms that explain how hormones and other neuromodulators affect auditory processing in both the sensory periphery and the central nervous system. Comparative investigations of hearing and hormones have been, and will continue to be, enriched by researchers from the fields of animal bioacoustics, human audiology, neuroethology, behavioral and molecular neuroendocrinology, and genetics.

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Acknowledgements

A grateful thanks to Arthur Popper and Joseph Sisneros for helpful advice on this chapter and for the invitation to join them and Richard Fay in editing this volume of SHAR; to Boris Chagnaud, Margaret Marchaterre, Sydney Carroll, and Randy Nelson for help with the figures; and to Irene Ballagh for helpful comments on the text. Research support during the preparation of this commentary was from the NSF (IOS-1457108).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Andrew H. Bass

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  1. Andrew H. Bass
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Correspondence to Andrew H. Bass .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Cornell University, Dept of Neruobiology and Behavior, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Andrew H. Bass

  2. University of Washington, Department of Psychology, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Joseph A. Sisneros

  3. Department of Biology, College Park, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

    Arthur N. Popper

  4. Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA

    Richard R. Fay

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Bass, A.H. (2016). Hearing and Hormones: Paying Homage to the Comparative Approach. In: Bass, A., Sisneros, J., Popper, A., Fay, R. (eds) Hearing and Hormones. Springer Handbook of Auditory Research, vol 57. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26597-1_1

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