HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 100/5/2956    most recent 90501.2008v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Web of Science (1) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Day, N. F. Articles by Nick, T. A. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Day, N. F. Articles by Nick, T. A.

Top-Down Regulation of Plasticity in the Birdsong System: "Premotor" Activity in the Nucleus HVC Predicts Song Variability Better Than It Predicts Song Features

Department of Neuroscience and Center for Neurobehavioral Development, University of Minnesota Academic Health Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Submitted 23 April 2008; accepted in final form 5 September 2008

We studied real-time changes in brain activity during active vocal learning in the zebra finch songbird. The song nucleus HVC is required for the production of learned song. To quantify the relationship of HVC activity and behavior, HVC population activity during repeated vocal sequences (motifs) was recorded and temporally aligned relative to the motif, millisecond by millisecond. Somewhat surprisingly, HVC activity did not reliably predict any vocal feature except amplitude and, to a lesser extent, entropy and pitch goodness (sound periodicity). Variance in "premotor" HVC activity did not reliably predict variance in behavior. In contrast, HVC activity inversely predicted the variance of amplitude, entropy, frequency, pitch, and FM. We reasoned that, if HVC was involved in song learning, the relationship of HVC activity to learned features would be developmentally regulated. To test this hypothesis, we compared the HVC song feature relationships in adults and juveniles in the sensorimotor "babbling" period. We found that the relationship of HVC activity to variance in FM was developmentally regulated, with the greatest difference at an HVC vocalization lag of 50 ms. Collectively, these data show that, millisecond by millisecond, bursts in HVC activity predict song stability on-line during singing, whereas decrements in HVC activity predict plasticity. These relationships between neural activity and plasticity may play a role in vocal learning in songbirds by enabling the selective stabilization of parts of the song that match a learned tutor model.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				T. S. Balmer, V. M. Carels, J. L. Frisch, and T. A. Nick Modulation of Perineuronal Nets and Parvalbumin with Developmental Song Learning J. Neurosci., October 14, 2009; 29(41): 12878 - 12885. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]