Behavioral and Neural Analysis of vocal Plasticity

描述（由申请人提供）：鸣禽的声乐学习为研究感觉运动学习的一般机制提供了一个模型，与人类语言学习特别相关。对于鸣禽和人类来说，听到别人的声音和自己的听觉反馈在声乐学习中起着核心作用。此外，歌唱和言语学习都受制于关键时期：早期生活中的适当经验对于正常的声乐学习是必要的，缺乏这种经验会导致神经系统功能的永久性缺陷。我们之前的研究表明，基底神经节-前脑通路参与了听觉反馈的处理，并驱动了依赖于经验的发声变化。在这里，我们建议使用一种新的方法，从行为和神经层面直接研究听觉反馈对歌曲学习和创作的影响。我们将使用听觉反馈的系统操作来更准确地描述歌唱行为如何依赖于听觉（目的1）。我们将把反馈操作与清醒行为鸟类的慢性神经记录结合起来，以确定声音控制结构中反馈改变所引发的信号的性质（目的2）。我们还将使用歌曲触发的这些相同结构的微刺激来测试它们对歌曲产生和歌曲可塑性的功能影响（目标3）。鸣禽提供了一个系统，在这个系统中，基于表现的反馈对一个定义良好的、可量化的行为的影响可能会在机制层面上得到理解。这样的理解将提供对正常学习过程的基本洞察，并有助于我们预防和纠正由这些过程的功能障碍引起的残疾。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Vocal learning by songbirds provides a model for studying general mechanisms of sensorimotor learning with particular relevance to human speech learning. For both songbirds and humans, hearing the sounds of others, and auditory feedback of oneself, plays a central role in vocal learning. Moreover, both song and speech learning are subject to critical periods: appropriate experience in early life is necessary for normal vocal learning and lack of that experience can lead to permanent deficits in nervous system function. Our previous work suggests that a basal ganglia-forebrain pathway participates in processing auditory feedback and in driving experience-dependent changes to vocalizations. Here, we propose to use a new approach to directly investigate at a behavioral and neural level how auditory feedback contributes to learning and production of songs. We will use systematic manipulations of auditory feedback to characterize more precisely how song behavior depends on hearing (Aim 1). We will couple feedback manipulations with chronic neural recordings from awake behaving birds to determine the nature of signals elicited by altered feedback in vocal control structures (Aim 2). We will also use song-triggered microstimulation of these same structures to test their functional influence on song production and song plasticity (Aim 3). Songbirds provide a system where the influence of performance-based feedback on a well-defined and quantifiable behavior potentially can be understood at a mechanistic level. Such an understanding will provide basic insight into normal learning processes and contribute to our ability to prevent and correct disabilities that arise from dysfunction of these processes.