In birds and higher mammals, auditory experience during development is critical to discriminate sound patterns in adulthood. However, the neural and molecular nature of this acquired ability remains elusive. In fruit flies, acoustic perception has been thought to be innate. Here we report, surprisingly, that auditory experience of a species-specific courtship song in developing Drosophila shapes adult song perception and resultant sexual behavior. Preferences in the song-response behaviors of both males and females were tuned by social acoustic exposure during development. We examined the molecular and cellular determinants of this social acoustic learning and found that GABA signaling acting on the GABAA receptor Rdl in the pC1 neurons, the integration node for courtship stimuli, regulated auditory tuning and sexual behavior. These findings demonstrate that maturation of auditory perception in flies is unexpectedly plastic and is acquired socially, providing a model to investigate how song learning regulates mating preference in insects.

中文翻译：

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听觉体验控制果蝇鸣叫辨别和性反应的成熟


在鸟类和高等哺乳动物中，发育过程中的听觉体验对于区分成年后的声音模式至关重要。然而，这种获得能力的神经和分子本质仍然难以捉摸。在果蝇中，声音感知被认为是与生俱来的。令人惊讶的是，我们在这里报告，果蝇发育过程中特定物种求爱歌曲的听觉体验塑造了成年歌曲的感知和由此产生的性行为。男性和女性对歌曲反应行为的偏好是通过发育过程中的社会声学暴露来调整的。我们检查了这种社会声学学习的分子和细胞决定因素，发现 GABA 信号传导作用于 pC1 神经元中的 GABAA 受体 Rdl（求偶刺激的整合节点），调节听觉调谐和性行为。这些发现表明，果蝇听觉感知的成熟具有出人意料的可塑性，并且是通过社会获得的，这为研究鸣叫学习如何调节昆虫的交配偏好提供了一个模型。