Perinatal androgen manipulations do not affect feminine behavioral potentials in voles

Adult voles show sexual differences in their behavioral responses to estrogen. To determine whether this sexual dimorphism is related to early androgen exposure as it is in other rodents, female voles were treated neonatally with testosterone. In addition, males were castrated neonatally or treated perinatally with either the antiandrogen, flutamide or with the antiaromatase, ATD. When androgenized females were treated with estrogen in adulthood, they exhibited normal sexual behaviors. Males deprived of androgen or treated with ATD during development did not display feminine behaviors when injected with estrogen in adulthood. These results suggest that the organizational hypothesis of sexual differentiation cannot explain the development of feminine behavior potentials in the vole. It is possible that the development of feminine behaviors in voles requires exposure to ovarian hormones during prepubertal development.