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13 - Song selectivity, singing, and synaptic plasticity in songbirds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2009

By
Michele M. Solis ,
Neal A. Hessler ,
Charlotte A. Boettiger  and
Allison J. Doupe
Edited by
James R. Pomerantz
Michele M. Solis
Affiliation:
5733 26th Ave NE Seattle, WA 98105
Neal A. Hessler
Affiliation:
Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience Department of Physiology Box 0444 University of California San Francisco, CA 94143-0444
Charlotte A. Boettiger
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology University of California 3210 Tolman Hall #1650 Berkeley, CA 94720-1650
Allison J. Doupe
Affiliation:
University of California UCSF, 513 Parnassus (HSE-818) Box 0444 San Francisco, CA 94143-0444
James R. Pomerantz
Affiliation:
Rice University, Houston
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Summary

Introduction

Birdsong, like human speech, is a learned vocal behavior that requires auditory feedback. Both as juveniles, while they learn to sing, and as adults, songbirds use auditory feedback to compare their own vocalizations with an internal model of a memorized target song. Here we describe experiments that explore the properties of the songbird anterior forebrain pathway (AFP), a basal ganglia–forebrain circuit known to be critical for normal song learning and for adult modification of vocal output, but not for normal adult singing. First, neural recordings in anesthetized, juvenile birds show that single AFP neurons become specialized to process the song stimuli that are compared during sensorimotor learning. AFP neurons develop tuning to the bird's own song, and in many cases to the tutor song as well, even when these stimuli are manipulated to be very different from each other. Second, neural recordings from adult, singing birds reveal robust singing-related activity in the AFP, which is present even in deaf birds. This activity is likely to originate from premotor areas, and could represent an efference copy of motor commands for song, predicting the sensory consequences of motor commands. Finally, in vitro studies of the AFP show that recurrent synapses between neurons in the AFP outflow nucleus can undergo activity-dependent and timing-sensitive strengthening that appears to be restricted to young birds.

Type
Chapter
Information
Topics in Integrative Neuroscience
From Cells to Cognition
 , pp. 363 - 384
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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