His mind might have been set on finding water or on perfecting a song he learned as a chick from his dad. But all of that gets pushed down the to-do list for an adult male zebra finch when he notices a female has drawn nigh.
“The males stop worrying about anything else and, for the first time, we have found signs of that re-prioritization in the behavior of specific brain cells,” said Vikram Gadagkar, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute and a co-first author, along with graduate student Andrea Roeser of Cornell University, on a new paper in Nature that documents these findings.
“Our findings could help explain what our brains are doing when they shift gears as different opportunities arise and as our priorities change,” said Dr. Gadagkar, who also is an assistant professor of neuroscience at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
In previous studies, he and colleagues had monitored male zebra finches practicing the songs they sing to females. The researchers found that when a bird made mistakes while rehearsing, the chemical signal dopamine, which is produced by certain sets of brain cells, takes a dip.
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Image: A painted pair of zebra finches, caught in a moment of courtship (Credit: Gadagkar lab, Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute).