THE CANARY ANDROGEN RECEPTOR MESSENGER-RNA IS LOCALIZED IN THE SONG CONTROL NUCLEI OF THE BRAIN AND IS RAPIDLY REGULATED BY TESTOSTERONE

Singing in canaries is an androgen-inducible behavior, under the contr ol of an identified motor pathway, which includes several discrete ''s ong nuclei'' in the telencephalon, To determine whether the mRNA for t he canary androgen receptor (cAR) is expressed in these song control n uclei, we synthesized probes from the recently cloned cAR cDNA and use d in situ hybridization to examine spring male canary brain sections, Concentrations of cAR mRNA are detectable in several of the song contr ol nuclei of the forebrain, including high vocal center (HVC), lateral magnocellular nucleus of the anterior neostriatum and robust nucleus of the archistriatum, In addition, we also show that testosterone trea tment rapidly induces a significant reduction of cAR mRNA levels in nu cleus HVC of females, Since the effects of androgen on singing behavio r occur much more slowly, the behavioral effects are probably a second ary or independent result of androgen's primary and immediate action o n target gene transcription, (C) 1995 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.