An avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal-motor units
© 2020, The Author(s). How are brain circuits constructed to achieve complex goals? The brains of young songbirds develop motor circuits that achieve the goal of imitating a specific tutor song to which they are exposed. Here, we set out to examine how song-generating circuits may be influenced earl...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer Science and Business Media LLC
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135227 |
| _version_ | 1826215483716665344 |
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| author | Mackevicius, Emily L Happ, Michael TL Fee, Michale S |
| author_facet | Mackevicius, Emily L Happ, Michael TL Fee, Michale S |
| author_sort | Mackevicius, Emily L |
| collection | MIT |
| description | © 2020, The Author(s). How are brain circuits constructed to achieve complex goals? The brains of young songbirds develop motor circuits that achieve the goal of imitating a specific tutor song to which they are exposed. Here, we set out to examine how song-generating circuits may be influenced early in song learning by a cortical region (NIf) at the interface between auditory and motor systems. Single-unit recordings reveal that, during juvenile babbling, NIf neurons burst at syllable onsets, with some neurons exhibiting selectivity for particular emerging syllable types. When juvenile birds listen to their tutor, NIf neurons are also activated at tutor syllable onsets, and are often selective for particular syllable types. We examine a simple computational model in which tutor exposure imprints the correct number of syllable patterns as ensembles in an interconnected NIf network. These ensembles are then reactivated during singing to train a set of syllable sequences in the motor network. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:31:16Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/135227 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:31:16Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1352272021-10-28T03:09:58Z An avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal-motor units Mackevicius, Emily L Happ, Michael TL Fee, Michale S © 2020, The Author(s). How are brain circuits constructed to achieve complex goals? The brains of young songbirds develop motor circuits that achieve the goal of imitating a specific tutor song to which they are exposed. Here, we set out to examine how song-generating circuits may be influenced early in song learning by a cortical region (NIf) at the interface between auditory and motor systems. Single-unit recordings reveal that, during juvenile babbling, NIf neurons burst at syllable onsets, with some neurons exhibiting selectivity for particular emerging syllable types. When juvenile birds listen to their tutor, NIf neurons are also activated at tutor syllable onsets, and are often selective for particular syllable types. We examine a simple computational model in which tutor exposure imprints the correct number of syllable patterns as ensembles in an interconnected NIf network. These ensembles are then reactivated during singing to train a set of syllable sequences in the motor network. 2021-10-27T20:22:33Z 2021-10-27T20:22:33Z 2020 2021-03-24T16:54:25Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135227 en 10.1038/S41467-020-18732-X Nature Communications Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Springer Science and Business Media LLC Nature |
| spellingShingle | Mackevicius, Emily L Happ, Michael TL Fee, Michale S An avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal-motor units |
| title | An avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal-motor units |
| title_full | An avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal-motor units |
| title_fullStr | An avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal-motor units |
| title_full_unstemmed | An avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal-motor units |
| title_short | An avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal-motor units |
| title_sort | avian cortical circuit for chunking tutor song syllables into simple vocal motor units |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/135227 |
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