At that moment, he drops everything else and hones in on trying to impress a potential mate. Researches have found that there is a mechanism in the zebra finch's brain that could help explain the way we shift priorities.
“The males stop worrying about anything else and, for the first time, we have found signs of that re-prioritization in the behavior of specific brain cells,” said Vikram Gadagkar, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute and a co-first author, along with graduate student Andrea Roeser of Cornell University, on a new paper in Nature that documents these findings.
“Our findings could help explain what our brains are doing when they shift gears as different opportunities arise and as our priorities change,” said Dr. Gadagkar, who also is an assistant professor of neuroscience at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Eurekalert shares details of the findings by Dr. Gadagkar and his colleagues as well as a link to their paper titled "Dopaminergic error signals retune to social feedback during courtship".
(Image credit: Margaret Strickland/Unsplash)