Birdsong

Song learning requires birds to interpret sensory evidence, assign credit to changes in behaviour, and reproduce remembered vocal targets. This lecture compares auditory-feedback adaptation, reinforcement learning and imitation as parts of a possible common learning architecture. Incomplete compensation for pitch-shifted feedback is examined through Bayesian causal inference: internal pitch predictions are combined with auditory evidence while feedback unlikely to be self-generated is discounted. Nonlinear pitch trajectories during conditioning motivate an extension of classical policy-gradie

Hans Slabbekoorn examines animal acoustic communication, from birdsong to low-frequency whale calls. Songs and other signals support courtship and conflict, while the acoustic properties of habitats shape their evolution. Expanding human noise in terrestrial and aquatic environments is changing the conditions under which these signals function. The lecture considers this acoustic environmental change and the attention needed to preserve animal communication, alongside implications for human physical and mental health.

…In birdsong, the roughly hundred-millisecond long song syllables are often considered basic vocal units, since syllables display little acoustic variability within t

…Levin, he connects human speech with birdsong and other animal vocalizations, considers why vocal learning varies between species, and explores links between speech, movement and dance.

The basal ganglia-thalamocortical (BGT) circuit controls the acquisition and production of motor skills in vertebrates, particularly human speech. Motor skills are hypothetically learned through reinforcement learning (RL). In songbirds, male juvenile zebra finches mimic the vocalizations of adults. Even in adulthood, their song may undergo slight modifications. The circuits underlying song learning and plasticity are called the song system.The song system, including the BGT loop and motor pathway, assesses vocal performance and controls song execution. The lateral magnocellular nucleus of the

…Birdsong is a remarkable example of a complex, learned and precisely timed natural behavior which is controlled by a brainstem-thalamocortical feedback loop. Projection neurons within the zebra finch cortical nucleus HVC (used as a proper name), produce precisely timed, highly reliable and ultra-sparse neural sequen

Birdsong is an important model for vocal learning and sequential motor behavior. Similarly to human language, songs, notably those of Bengalese finches and canaries, exhibit higher-order sequence structure, meaning that the statistics of one syllable may depend on a number of previous syllables. However, this number (the context depth) varies in a manner that has challenged previous formal approaches. Here we used a hierarchical non-parametric Bayesian sequence model (based on Teh, 2006; Elteto et al., 2022) that seamlessly combines predictive information from shorter and longer contexts of

Performing learned behaviors requires animals to produce precisely timed motor sequences. Birdsong is an excellent natural example of a complex, learned and precisely timed behavior. In the zebra finch we asked how thalamocortical input contributes to song dynamics. Birdsong is controlled by a brainstem-thalamocortical feedback loop. The premotor cortical region HVC (proper name) contains projection neurons that produce precisely timed, highly reliable and ultra-sparse spike burst sequences that underlie song dynamics. The origin of these bursts is debated. One model posits that bursts are gen

Optimal motor performance requires flexible adjustments to behavior depending on different contexts. This idea has gained wide support from behavioral and computational studies, but remains poorly understood at the neural level. Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata) song is a learned motor sequence composed of discrete elements, or syllables. Adult finches can learn to modify the pitch of individual syllables in a gradual way, supported by a well-understood cortical-basal ganglia circuit, the AFP (anterior forebrain pathway). We here tested whether adult finches can use arbitrary contextual cues

…Like human speech, birdsong relies on a tight muscle coordination, and songbirds have proved to be an outstanding model to study the sequential pattern of neuronal activity encoding action timing. In male zebra finches, the premotor nucleus HVC is responsible for the precise control of song tempo. Current computational models of HVC rely on synfire chains, a purely feedforward network model that can account for HVC sequential activity. Synfire chains are however