Dopaminergic Innervation of the Japanese Quail NCL

Following several years of groundwork after the closure of the Learning Lab at Boğaziçi, including two TÜBİTAK-funded projects, two research visits to the Güntürkün Lab at Ruhr University Bochum, and a productive collaboration with this leading avian neuroscience team, we have now published our first neuroanatomy study in the Japanese quail.

Framed within the concept of convergent evolution, our work examines the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), an executive hub in birds functionally analogous to the mammalian prefrontal cortex despite their distant evolutionary origins. While the NCL has been extensively studied in pigeons, songbirds, and chickens, its organization in other Galliformes has remained largely unexplored. Using immunohistochemistry for tyrosine hydroxylase, we mapped dopaminergic projections from midbrain structures and characterized their cellular targets within the NCL. We find that the quail NCL exhibits dense dopaminergic innervation primarily targeting principal neurons, with comparatively sparse input to interneuron populations, a pattern consistent with other Galliform species. These results demonstrate a conserved dopaminergic architecture of the NCL across Galliformes and establish the Japanese quail as a valuable model for investigating cognitive neurobiology in birds.