NEURAL MECHANISMS OF INDIVIDUAL VOCAL RECOGNITION

行为学和神经生理学技术在鸟类鸣叫研究中的整合，使我们对复杂运动系统和声乐学习的神经基础的理解取得了重大进展。这一建议遵循了类似的逻辑，通过整合欧洲椋鸟（Sturnus vulgaris）的神经生理学和行为来感知歌曲。这项研究将扩大我们对神经机制的理解，这些机制是生物学上有意义的声音信号感知的基础。鸟鸣就是这样一种具有生物学意义的信号，欧洲椋鸟和许多其他种类的鸣禽一样，用鸣声来识别个体的同类。椋鸟是研究鸣声感知神经基础的理想动物模型，因为：(1)椋鸟的识别能力可以概括为熟悉鸟类的新歌，(2)不同鸣声特征对个体声音识别的行为相关性已经得到了很好的理解。椋鸟个体声音识别的这两个方面将使我们能够区分对单个歌曲特定的神经元反应和对个体特定的神经元反应，并且进一步描述这些反应的性质，以及引起它们的特定信号特性的生物学相关性。这种研究椋鸟听觉感知的综合方法将有助于深入了解处理复杂通信信号的听觉前脑区域，以及产生识别行为的神经元机制。这样做，这些实验的结果将有助于我们理解复杂刺激的高阶处理。

The integration of behavioral and neurophysiological techniques in the study of birdsong has led to significant advances in our understanding of the neural bases for both complex motor systems and vocal learning. This proposal follows a similar logic by integrating the neurophysiology and behavior of song perception in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). This research will broaden our understanding of the neural mechanisms that underlie the perception of biologically meaningful acoustic signals. Birdsong is one such biologically meaningful signal, and European starlings, like many species of song birds, use song to recognize individual conspecifics. Starlings are an ideal animal model in which to study the neural basis of song perception because (1) recognition abilities in this species generalize to novel songs from familiar birds, and (2) the behavioral relevance that different acoustic features of song hold for individual vocal recognition is well understood. These two aspects of individual vocal recognition in starlings will allow us to differentiate between neuronal responses that are specific to single songs and those that are specific to individuals, and further, to characterize the nature of these responses with respect to the biological relevance of the specific signal properties that elicit them. This integrative approach to the study of auditory perception in starlings will provide insight into the regions of the auditory forebrain that process complex communication signals, and into the neuronal mechanisms that give rise to recognition behaviors. In so doing, the results of these experiments will contribute significantly to our understanding of the higher-order processing of complex stimuli.