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. 2021 Oct 11;11:20130. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-99497-1

Figure 4.

Figure 4

Local estrogen concentrations in the POM increase during sexual interactions but no change is detected in males just after seeing a female for 10 min. (a) Schematic representation of coronal sections of the quail brain showing the location of the dialysis probes. IN probes are either within or touching the colored zones representing brain regions expressing aromatase. See legend of Fig. 1 for the definition of different brain areas. Black and open circles respectively represent birds in which estrogen concentration did or did not increase above 150% of the baseline (BL) during the interaction period (last sample of each experimental condition). (b) Mean time course of average changes in estrogen concentration in the dialysate as a function of the probe location (based on the mean concentration measured in the last 3 BL samples). Friedman ANOVA: POM, χ2n=8 = 21.59, p = 0.0103; OUT, χ2n=6 = 5.418, p = 0.7964. No post hoc comparison reached significance. (c) Individual percent changes in estrogen concentration relative to BL in the three sampling periods for animals whose probe was in POM (Friedman ANOVA: χ2n=8 = 4.629, p = 0.2011, or outside POM (OUT, χ2n=6 = 1.435, p = 0.7496). View: Period in which the male was allowed to see the female without physical interaction; INT: interaction with a female; POST: Period after the behavioral test. The baseline amounts of estrogens per sample in this experiment ranged between 0.041 and 0.397 pg per sample (10 µl; Mean ± S.E.M. = 0.125 ± 0.019, n = 14). Panel A is composed of home made drawings onto which probe positions were reported using Graphic for Mac (https://graphic.com/mac/), other panels were created with Graph Pad Prism 8 (https://www.graphpad.com/scientific-software/prism/). All panels were assembled in Graphic.