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The Avian Basal Ganglia Are a Source of Rapid Behavioral Variation That Enables Vocal Motor Exploration.
J Neurosci
November 2018
Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94143-0444.
The basal ganglia (BG) participate in aspects of reinforcement learning that require evaluation and selection of motor programs associated with improved performance. However, whether the BG additionally contribute to behavioral variation ("motor exploration") that forms the substrate for such learning remains unclear. In songbirds, a tractable system for studying BG-dependent skill learning, a role for the BG in generating exploratory variability, has been challenged by the finding that lesions of Area X, the song-specific component of the BG, have no lasting effects on several forms of vocal variability that have been studied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZebra finches are sensitive to combinations of temporally distributed features in a model of word recognition.
J Acoust Soc Am
August 2018
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94158, USA.
Discrimination between spoken words composed of overlapping elements, such as "captain" and "captive," relies on sensitivity to unique combinations of prefix and suffix elements that span a "uniqueness point" where the word candidates diverge. To model such combinatorial processing, adult female zebra finches were trained to discriminate between target and distractor syllable sequences that shared overlapping "contextual" prefixes and differed only in their "informative" suffixes. The transition from contextual to informative syllables thus created a uniqueness point analogous to that present between overlapping word candidates, where targets and distractors diverged.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNaturalistic stimulation drives opposing heterosynaptic plasticity at two inputs to songbird cortex.
Nat Neurosci
September 2015
Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.
Songbirds learn precisely sequenced motor skills (songs) subserved by distinct brain areas, including the premotor cortical analog HVC, which is essential for producing learned song, and a 'cortical'-basal ganglia loop required for song plasticity. Inputs from these nuclei converge in RA (robust nucleus of the arcopallium), making it a likely locus for song learning. However, activity-dependent synaptic plasticity has never been described in either input.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDopamine physiology in the basal ganglia of male zebra finches during social stimulation.
Eur J Neurosci
June 2015
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), 505 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94143, USA.
Accumulating evidence suggests that dopamine (DA) is involved in altering neural activity and gene expression in a zebra finch cortical-basal ganglia circuit specialized for singing, upon the shift between solitary singing and singing as a part of courtship. Our objective here was to sample changes in the extracellular concentrations of DA in Area X of adult and juvenile birds, to test the hypothesis that DA levels would change similarly during presentation of a socially salient stimulus in both age groups. We used microdialysis to sample the extracellular milieu of Area X in awake, behaving adult and juvenile male zebra finches, and analysed the dialysate using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrochemical detection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEmergence of context-dependent variability across a basal ganglia network.
Neuron
April 2014
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Context dependence is a key feature of cortical-basal ganglia circuit activity, and in songbirds the cortical outflow of a basal ganglia circuit specialized for song, LMAN, shows striking increases in trial-by-trial variability and bursting when birds sing alone rather than to females. To reveal where this variability and its social regulation emerge, we recorded stepwise from corticostriatal (HVC) neurons and their target spiny and pallidal neurons in Area X. We find that corticostriatal and spiny neurons both show precise singing-related firing across both social settings.
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