Meeting Abstract

P1-48   -   Effects of chronic stress on neural gene expression and the physiological stress response in budgerigars Villalba, A*; Draney, C; Apodaca, J; Schmidt, A; Jawor, JM; Wright, TF; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM alondra5@nmsu.edu

After a stressful event an organism will initiate a physiological response mediated by glucocorticoid hormones (GC) that influence energy metabolism, memory, learning, and protein catabolism via GC receptors. While these GC-mediated effects can be beneficial for survival, many studies have shown that prolonged stress can have detrimental effects on behavior and cognition, including the process of vocal learning. We aimed to develop the budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus), a small parrot, as a model for understanding the effects of chronic stress on vocal learning in adults. We adapted a chronic stress protocol that features unpredictable disruptions in the captive environment to test the hypothesis that chronic stress diminishes learning ability and alters neural gene expression. Chronic stress was induced for 3 weeks at 3 levels of disturbance: high, medium, and baseline (control) treatments. We measured weight, breath rate, and baseline and stress response corticosterone (CORT, main avian GC) levels at weekly intervals and collected brains at end of the 3 weeks to examine neural expression of FoxP2, a key gene mediating vocal plasticity. We found that baseline circulating CORT increased and weight decreased in the high stress treatment over the 3 weeks, suggesting the protocol was effective in inducing chronic physiological stress. We measured the expression of FoxP2 in the vocal learning center MMSt using qPCR and immunohistochemistry. We did not see a significant difference among treatments with either approach although there was a trend towards overexpression of FoxP2 in the high stress treatment. These results suggest that chronic stress can impact neural gene expression and future work can improve our understanding of how chronic stress affects adult language learning in humans.