Birdsong is a complex, learned vertebrate behavior, which is dependent upon auditory feedback for proper shaping of juvenile song into its adult form. Similarly, auditory feedback may be necessary for the maintenance of adult song in a stable form. Several regions of the passerine brain are known to function in both audition and production of song; these regions (including nucleus HVc) are likely sites for integration of auditory motor information. But, the manner in which information of either form is encoded has yet to be fully determine. Here, single unit recordings in nucleus HVC will be used to assess the auditory responses to playback of song in a species which possess multiple songs. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to test for syllable-specific, song-specific, or song-general encoding of auditory events. Similarly, recording from multiple electrodes in the behaving animal will examine the encoding of song from a motor perspective. These experiments will provide new insight of the way in which syllable context within a song determines how it both perceived and generated.
