Topic: song copying

Many of our most impressive skills, from speech to music, evolve across many dimensions and are learned spontaneously without external reinforcement. While we know much about how the basal ganglia contribute to learning low-dimensional, externally reinforced behaviors like lever pressing, their contribution to learning high-dimensional behaviors is less clear. Birdsong learning is a paradigmatic example of high-dimensional learning. Juvenile songbirds vary many acoustic dimensions as they learn to copy their tutor’s song, a spontaneous process that evolves without external reinforcement. While