Mechanisms of vocal learning in the songbird:A hypothesis for the role of cortical-basal ganglia circuits

Young songbirds, like humans, learn their vocalizations by imitating their parents. This process happens in a series of stages. After memorizing the song of an adult tutor, young birds begin to babble, singing highly random variable sounds. By listening to their own sounds and comparing them with the memory of the tutor song, they gradually refine their song until it can be a nearly exact copy of the tutor.   How all this happens at the level of neural circuitry is not yet clear, but recent experiments have begun to shed light on the brain regions and mechanisms involved in the generation of babbling and exploratory variability, in the evaluation of the song, and in the implementation of corrective plastic changes in the motor circuitry. I will describe our current hypothesis for how interacting cortical-basal ganglia circuits implement these various processes underlying vocal learning.

For more details please contact Michael Yartsev: myartsev@gmail.com