Hormones affect how females react to males

ATLANTA, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Hormones can make the difference to whether a mate's rendition of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On" is sexy or annoying, U.S. researchers said.

Study leader Emory University neuroscientist Donna Maney said social behaviors such as courtship, parenting and aggression depend primarily on two factors: a social signal to trigger the behavior and a hormonal milieu that facilitates or permits it.

"Our results demonstrate a possible neural mechanism by which hormones may alter the processing of these signals and affect social decision-making," Maney said in a statement.

The researchers treated female white-throated sparrows with estrogen, to mimic breeding levels of estrogen, and compared them with females with low, non-breeding levels of estrogen as they listened to recordings of either male white-throated sparrow song -- a courtship signal -- or synthetic beeps.

The study, published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology, found song-specific neural responses were higher in the "breeding" females.

"In women, preferences for male faces, voices, body odors and behavior change over the course of the menstrual cycle as estrogen levels rise and fall," Maney said.

"Our work with these songbirds shows a possible neural basis for those changes."