Vocal learning by songbirds provides a model for studying general mechanisms of sensorimotorlearning with particular relevance to human speech learning. For both songbirds and humans,hearing the sounds of others, and auditory feedback of oneself, plays a central role in vocallearning. Our previous work suggests that a basal ganglia-forebrain pathway participates inprocessing auditory feedback and in driving experience-dependent changes to vocalizations.Moreover, these experiments suggest that variability introduced from basal ganglia circuitry to songmotor structures and behavior may play a crucial role in enabling song plasticity. Here, we proposeto further test this idea by combining behavioral and neural approaches to study contributions ofvariability to song production and plasticity. We will use chronic recordings from basal gangliacircuitry and song motor structures in singing birds to characterize normal levels of behavioral andneural variation as well as to examine neuron-neuron and neuron-behavior co-variation (Aim 1).We will then use feedback manipulations in adult birds to drive adaptive changes in song and studythe relationship between behavioral variability and the capacity for plasticity (Aim 2). Finally, we willmonitor and manipulate activity (via chronic recordings and lesions) during conditions of adaptiveplasticity to investigate mechanisms underlying the generation of neural variability and theirrequirement for behavioral change (Aim 3). Songbirds provide a system where the influence ofperformance-based feedback on a well-defined and quantifiable behavior potentially can beunderstood at a mechanistic level. Such an understanding will provide basic insight into normallearning processes and contribute to our ability to prevent and correct disabilities that arise fromdysfunction of these processes.
| Chaisanguanthum, Kris S; Shen, Helen H; Sabes, Philip N (2017) Neural Representation and Causal Models in Motor Cortex. J Neurosci 37:3413-3424 |
| Cheung, Steven W; Atencio, Craig A; Levy, Eliott R J et al. (2017) Anisomorphic cortical reorganization in asymmetric sensorineural hearing loss. J Neurophysiol 118:932-948 |
| Yazdan-Shahmorad, Azadeh; Diaz-Botia, Camilo; Hanson, Timothy L et al. (2016) A Large-Scale Interface for Optogenetic Stimulation and Recording in Nonhuman Primates. Neuron 89:927-39 |
| Zhou, Miou; Greenhill, Stuart; Huang, Shan et al. (2016) CCR5 is a suppressor for cortical plasticity and hippocampal learning and memory. Elife 5: |
| Malone, Brian J; Beitel, Ralph E; Vollmer, Maike et al. (2015) Modulation-frequency-specific adaptation in awake auditory cortex. J Neurosci 35:5904-16 |
| Ravits, John (2014) Focality, stochasticity and neuroanatomic propagation in ALS pathogenesis. Exp Neurol 262 Pt B:121-6 |
| Chaisanguanthum, Kris S; Shen, Helen H; Sabes, Philip N (2014) Motor variability arises from a slow random walk in neural state. J Neurosci 34:12071-80 |
| Atencio, Craig A; Shih, Jonathan Y; Schreiner, Christoph E et al. (2014) Primary auditory cortical responses to electrical stimulation of the thalamus. J Neurophysiol 111:1077-87 |
| Schreiner, Christoph E; Polley, Daniel B (2014) Auditory map plasticity: diversity in causes and consequences. Curr Opin Neurobiol 24:143-56 |
| Malone, Brian J; Beitel, Ralph E; Vollmer, Maike et al. (2013) Spectral context affects temporal processing in awake auditory cortex. J Neurosci 33:9431-50 |
Showing the most recent 10 out of 58 publications
