Brain Research (1999) 850, 55-62. 
Effects of testosterone on sexually
dimorphic parvocellular neurons expressing vasotocin mRNA in the male quail
brain
Giancarlo
Panzica, Marzia Pessatti, Carla Viglietti Panzica, Roland Grossmann°,
Jacques Balthazart*
Dept.Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Forensic Medicine, University of Torino,
Italy, °Institute for Animal Science and Animal Behavior, Federal Research
Center of Agiculture, D-29223, Celle, Germany, and *Lab.Biochemistry, University
of Liège, Belgium
In situ hybridization with a P33-labelled cDNA probe
was used to analyze the effects of castration and replacement therapy by testosterone
on the number of neurons expressing vasotocin mRNA in the male quail brain.
Castration completely eliminated neurons expressing vasotocin mRNA in the
previously described parvocellular vasotocin cell groups, located in the
medial preoptic nucleus and in the anterior and posterior part of the medial
subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis. These effects were
completely reversed by a three week treatment with exogenous testosterone.
No marked change in vasotocin expression could be detected in the magnocellular
cell groups located in the paraventricular and supraoptic nuclei. These data
indicate that the testosterone-induced changes in the vasotocinergic innervation
of the quail medial preoptic region and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis
result from controlling mechanisms at the pretranslational, presumably transcriptional
level. These control mechanisms are therefore very similar to those described
for the rat brain despite the existence of major differences in the neuroanatomical
organization of this peptidergic system in the two species.
Key words: