Much of information processing by the human brain involves learned information such as phonetic rules of speech. How learned information is encoded, stored, and recalled is one of the most fundamental questions in neuroscience. Vocal learning in songbirds offers a clear-cut model for the study of this question. Some neurons in one of the forebrain song control nuclei of songbirds respond selectively to the bird's own song and not to songs lacking a particular set of acoustic cues. The proposed project aims to investigate, using multi- and single-neuron recording techniques, whether neuronal selectivity for the bird's song occurs in lower-order auditory nuclei, when the selectivity emerges during song development, and what role hearing of a bird's own voice plays in the development of the neuronal selectivity.
| Margoliash, D (1986) Preference for autogenous song by auditory neurons in a song system nucleus of the white-crowned sparrow. J Neurosci 6:1643-61 |
