Behavioural Brain Research 96 (1998) 151 – 159 Research report The selectivity of sexual responses to song displays: effects of partial chemical lesion of the HVC in female canaries C. Del Negro a, *, M. Gahr b , G. Leboucher a , M. Kreutzer a a Laboratoire de Psychophysiologie et d’Ethologie, U.P.R.E.S.A. 7025, Uniersite ´ Paris X Nanterre, 92000 Nanterre Cedex, France b Max Planck -Institut fu ¨r Verhaltensphysiologie, D-82319 Seewiesen, Germany Received 23 July 1997; received in revised form 15 December 1997; accepted 15 December 1997 Abstract By stimulating female canaries with computer edited songs, we investigated the involvement of the caudal nucleus of the ventral hyperstriatum or high vocal center (HVC) in the selectivity of sexual responsiveness to different kinds of conspecific songs. Due to the fact that the types of conspecific song phrases act as relevant cues to give song its sexual potency, we compared courtship responses to two conspecific songs, highly sexually-stimulating and weakly sexually-stimulating song, before and after the partial ibotenate lesion of the HVC. Sexual responses to heterospecific song were also tested. Copulation solicitation displays were used as an index of female responses. The partial chemical lesions of the HVC whatever the HVC portion damaged affected female bird behavior; they responded more strongly to weakly sexually-stimulating song and to heterospecific song than before the lesions. However, the conspecific sexually attractive song continued to elicit the highest level of sexual displays. None of the control birds ever altered their pattern of responses to the three song types. The results suggest that the HVC is part of the neural network engaged in the control of sexual preferences to conspecific song displays. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: HVC; Female canaries; Sexual responses; Song stimuli; Ibotenate lesion 1. Introduction In songbirds, males and females exhibit different patterns of behavior, especially in contexts related to courtship and reproduction. Adult males of the oscine suborder of passerine birds such as male canaries have a complex song repertoire learned by reference to audi- tory information, which conveys sexual information used by females to select a mate [9,17,35]. In contrast, the songs of female canaries as well as of other female songbirds differ in temporal structure from male song and their exact function remains unknown [40]. Studies on female songbirds have focused on their sexual recep- tivity to song displays as a means of determining the particular salient attributes of male song. In canaries, a large repertoire and song diversity have been shown to be important in female mate choice [16]. Females are also able to discriminate between conspecific and het- erospecific song [15] and gain information about their own breed identity from both phonology and song segmentation [37]. Particular song phrases in male songs have a high probability of stimulating courtship solicitation displays (CSD) in receptive female canaries while other phrases have a low sexual potential [39]. This special type of song phrase is a powerful sexual releaser in whatever acoustic context it is sung [39]. A sexually-stimulating phrase contains at least several es- sential features such as bipartite syllables, the rapid * Corresponding author. Present address: Laboratory of Psy- chophysiology and Ethology, UPRESA 7025, University of Paris X-Nanterre, 200, avenue de al Republique, 92001 Nanterre Cedex, France. Fax: +33 1 40977474; e-mail: Catherine.Del.Negro@leec.univ-paris13.Fr 0166-4328/98/$ - see front matter © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII S0166-4328(98)00009-6