Behavioral and Neural Analysis of vocal Plasticity

描述（由申请人提供）：鸣禽的声音学习提供了一个模型，用于研究与人类语音学习特别相关的感觉运动学习的一般机制。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，歌曲和语言学习都经历了关键时期：早期生活中的适当经验对于正常的声乐学习是必要的，缺乏这种经验可能导致神经系统功能的永久性缺陷。我们以前的工作表明，基底神经节-前脑通路参与处理听觉反馈，并在驾驶经验依赖性的变化，以发声。在这里，我们建议使用一种新的方法，直接调查在行为和神经水平的听觉反馈如何有助于学习和生产的歌曲。我们将使用听觉反馈的系统操作来更精确地描述歌曲行为如何依赖于听觉（目标1）。我们将反馈操作与清醒行为鸟类的慢性神经记录相结合，以确定由声音控制结构中改变的反馈引起的信号的性质（目标2）。我们还将使用这些相同结构的歌曲触发微刺激来测试它们对歌曲产生和歌曲可塑性的功能影响（目的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明确定义和可量化的行为的影响可能可以在一个机械的水平上被理解。这种理解将提供对正常学习过程的基本见解，并有助于我们预防和纠正这些过程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.