Rapid changes in brain aromatase activity in the female quail brain following expression of sexual behavior

Abstract

In male quail, estrogens produced in the brain (neuroestrogens) exert a dual action on male sexual behavior: they increase sexual motivation within minutes via mechanisms activated at the membrane but facilitate sexual performance by slower, presumably nuclear-initiated, mechanisms. Recent work indicates that neuroestrogens are also implicated in the control of female sexual motivation despite the presence of high circulating concentrations of estrogens of ovarian origin. Interestingly aromatase activity (AA) in the male brain is regulated in time domains corresponding to the slow "genomic" and faster "non-genomic" modes of action of estrogens. Furthermore, rapid changes in brain AA are observed in males after sexual interactions with a female. In this study, we investigated whether similar rapid changes in brain AA are observed in females allowed to interact sexually with males. A significant decrease in AA was observed in the medial preoptic nucleus after interactions that lasted 2, 5 or 10 min but this decrease was no longer significant after 15 min of interaction. In the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, a progressive decline of average AA was observed between 2 and 15 min but it never reached statistical significance. AA in this nucleus was however negatively correlated with the sexual receptivity of the female. These data indicate that sexual interactions affect brain AA in females as in males in an anatomically specific manner and suggest that rapid changes in brain estrogens production could also modulate female sexual behavior.

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