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Neural mechanisms of song and dance in parrots
Abstract
The human drive for social imitation is so intense that children raised by dogs bark, exhibit calloused elbows and prefer four-legged locomotion. Songbirds learn to sing a copy of a tutor song heard early in life and provide a model to study vocal imitation. We discovered that when a male sings the right note, its dopamine (DA) neurons are activated much like when a thirsty rodent receives an unexpected food reward. This DA signal is constructed and used in songbird basal ganglia circuits resembling an actor-critic reinforcement system, suggesting that birds forage an acoustic landscape in search of the right note with similar signals and circuits that a rat uses to forage a spatial landscape for food. To test how DA signals could evaluate song as well as water and social rewards, we measured DA signals in thirsty and lonely males provided with opportunities to retrieve water, sing, or court a female. Song evaluation DA signals immediately re-tuned to social feedback during courtship, suggesting that affiliative social interactions can reinforce behavior. To move beyond auditory-to-vocal imitation towards human-like imitation of a whole behavioral repertoire, we are now studying social communication in parrots. Parrots raised by dogs bark and defend territories on foot; while ones raised by Americans can learn 100s of English words and dance familiarly to hop-hop. To rigorously test their capacity for imitated song and dance, we are using deep learning approaches to analyze enormous audio/video datasets of socializing budgerigars, small neuroscience-compatible parrots. We find that budgerigars precisely coordinate specific vocalizations to specific gestures and, moreover, that this vocal-gestural coupling is imitated. In neural recordings from parrot vocal motor cortex, we observe neural signals associated with vocalizations (as expected) as well as precise gestural kinematics. This mixing of vocal and gestural signals suggests that the parrot song system may coordinate song and dance, much like Broca’s area appears to control speech, sign language, and paralinguistic gestures.
Jesse Goldberg, MD, PhD
Cornell University
Jesse received his B.S. from Haverford College and his MD/PhD degrees from Columbia University. His PhD with Rafa Yuste focused on dendritic computation and microcircuits of the cerebral cortex. In medical school, he became interested in neuropsychiatric disorders such as Parkinson's and dystonia that impair basal ganglia function. His postdoctoral work with Michale Fee at MIT focused on vocal learning in songbirds. He joined Cornell's Department of Neurobiology and Behavior in 2012. There, his lab studies motor control, learning, and social behavior in mice, songbirds and parrots. His guiding philosophy is that comparative approaches distinguish general principles from behavior-, effector-, machine- and species-specific solutions to motor learning problems. Or perhaps his guiding philosophy is that comparing behavior and brain function across species is simply fun. Jesse has been supported by the Pew, Klingenstein, and Kavli foundations, as well as the NIH New Innovator and Cornell Neurotech programs.
Hosted by - Jun Ding (Ding Lab)
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The Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute seminar series brings together the Stanford neuroscience community to discuss cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary brain research, from biochemistry to behavior and beyond.
Topics include new discoveries in fundamental neurobiology; advances in human and translational neuroscience; insights from computational and theoretical neuroscience; and the development of novel research technologies and neuro-engineering breakthroughs.
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