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Hormones and the Incentive Salience of Bird Song

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Hearing and Hormones

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

Abstract

Nervous systems have evolved many features to ensure that the resources necessary for survival and reproduction are attractive. Because not all resources are valuable in all contexts, those features need to be plastic, in other words, the attractiveness or ‘incentive salience’ of some stimuli should change according to context. Courtship vocalizations, for example, have high incentive salience only during the breeding season, when approaching potential mates is adaptive. Female songbirds are attracted to male song only when reproductive hormones, such as estradiol, are high. In this chapter, the brain mechanisms by which estradiol changes the incentive salience of song are considered. First, estradiol may act directly on central auditory structures. Second, cells synthesizing dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin innervate the auditory pathway and are sensitive to estradiol, making them excellent candidates for mediating the effects of endocrine state on the perception of song. Third, the auditory forebrain of songbirds contains dense populations of oxytocin receptors, which in mammals play a clear role in social reward and are regulated by estradiol. Each of these neuromodulatory systems may prime auditory areas to respond differently to song depending on the bird’s reproductive condition. Seasonally breeding songbirds, for which attraction to song changes throughout the year, are ideal model systems for understanding how these neuromodulatory systems contribute to plasticity of behavioral responses to sound. Juvenile male songbirds, which seek out song in order to learn to sing, offer the opportunity to study how these systems contribute to social motivation during development.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Nathan James, Yuchen Hu, Susan Lyons, Camden MacDowell, Keith Sockman, Tony Tran, and Wendy Zinzow-Kramer for their contributions to the figures. The authors are grateful to Andy Bass and Joe Sisneros for the invitation to submit this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Emory University, 36 Eagle Row, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Donna L. Maney & Carlos A. Rodriguez-Saltos

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  1. Donna L. Maney
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  2. Carlos A. Rodriguez-Saltos
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Correspondence to Donna L. Maney .

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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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Maney, D.L., Rodriguez-Saltos, C.A. (2016). Hormones and the Incentive Salience of Bird Song. 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_5

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