Sharing a Brain Between Sexes

The process of sexual selection can only exist as a product of neural-networking differences between the sexes of organisms. According to a recent study done at Yale University, "It isn’t what you’ve got — it’s how you use it". As we learned in class, females are "programmed" to be choosy, whereas males are wired for competition as means of gaining access to the females.

The staff of Yale researchers discovered the "unisex" brain via a study on the courtship dance of flies, a light-performance the male flies put on to impress females with the intention of copulating. Their study sought out to find what neurons were responsible for behavior in the courtship dance of flies, and how the neural circuits in males and females differed. As means of testing this, the researchers "genetically engineered specific neurons in the fly to respond to light". By doing this, the scientists could manipulate the neural circuits that control the behavior pattern directly. A laser light was then used to imitate the light performance, and the resulting neural reactions of certain nerve cells in the males was observed to identify the nerve cells responsible for this courting behavior. Finally, using the laser cue, the researchers were able to show that the same set of neural-networks were present in the female flies, who could actually be manipulated to show this behavior.

I find it interesting that the differences between the two sexes is only a matter of neural networking, and in fact, we can manipulate sex-specific behaviors.

Source: http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/04/30/its.a.unisex.brain.with.specific.signals.trigger.male.behavior

Posted By: Helen Thi (12)