Brain temperature in male zebra finches rises in response to presentation of a female bird.

Abstract

<p>(A, B) Schematic diagrams of the implantation of a thermocouple for temperature measurements. (A) A thermocouple was implanted into HVC along the approach angle shown. Yellow ovals indicate major nuclei of the song system, and arrows indicate the motor pathway. (B) In other experiments, a thermocouple was implanted into the hyperpallium, outside of the song system. Dotted line indicates boundary of the hyperpallium. (C) Average amount of singing triggered by presenting a female bird to the male. Error bars are SEM across all birds. (D) Examples of temperature recordings in HVC of bird #3 during individual trials in which a female bird was presented to the male for 5 min. (E) Examples of temperature recordings in the hyperpallium of bird #5 during presentations of a female. (F) Average temperature change across all 8 male birds during presentations of a female. Shaded area is SEM across all birds. (G) Average amount of singing produced in social isolation aligned to the onsets of the epochs of undirected singing. Epochs were defined as singing periods preceded by at least 20 min without singing. (H) Examples of HVC temperature recordings from the same bird as in (D) during epochs of undirected singing. (I) Examples of hyperpallium temperature recordings from the same bird as in (E) during epochs of undirected singing. (J) Average temperature change in all 7 birds during epochs of undirected singing. For all averages, data were first averaged for each bird; mean values were then averaged across all 8 birds.</p